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Copyright ^ 


CGPYR1G1IT DEPOSIT. 


































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THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 













/ 

THE 


Hairpin Duchess 

BY 

ALICE WOODS 

\\ r 



NEW YORK 

DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 

1924 




Copyright, 1924, hy 
Duffield and Company 


©C1A80759 4 



Printed in U.S.A . 


OCT 31*24 

^ £ '€) t %, i 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Nelson and Seymour ... 3 

II. Straws.26 

III. Mr. Dunbar Presents ... 37 

IV. Cafe De Madrid.49 

V. Nelson Confesses .... 68 

VI. Batik.\ . . 88 

VII. Turqoises of Texas .... 103 

VIII. Evening on the Left Bank . 112 

IX. Different.132 

X. Judith .143 

XI. Marie-Lou Pleads for Elsie . 157 

XII. The Hairpin Duchess . . . 167 

XIII. Thinking of Papa .... 190 

XIV. Remember.206 

XV. Men's Rights .213 

















THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“Spare my poor cousin, Marquise . 

She is eminently ridiculous, hut 
I love her sincerely. }} 

Louis XIV to Madame de Montespan. 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


i 

NELSON AND SEYMOUR 

‘‘You must be flush, buying all these Amer¬ 
ican Magazines, Nelson. ‘Cost like the devil 
here, eh? However, the pleasure is mine!” 
Seymour stretched and yawned, then out of 
sheer laziness, dropped his magazine over the 
side of his bed. “Funny story, that—I don’t 
mean funny—.” He looked contentedly about 
the big bedroom with its pleasantly curtained 
windows, one pair drawn out over chair-backs 
to let in the air. He switched off his electric 
reading-lamp, and lighted a cigarette, and 
glanced over at the bed in the opposite corner. 
“Asleep?” 

“Yes—thanks,” came the faint cynical 
answer. 

“Great idea of mine, making a living-dining 
3 


4 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


room out of your bedroom, and a kitchen out 
of your closet, eh? With old Melanie to cook 
for us—pretty darn nice, our Sunday night 
parties, eh?” 

No comment. 

Seymour, just out of sleep and very loqua- 
tious, talked on, entertaining himself. He 
turned on his side looking down at the maga¬ 
zine on the floor. “That story gets me, rather. 
Paris-American stuff, you know. Like us, 
lovely tender blossoms, going round with our 
untransplantable roots in the air. We’re blos¬ 
soms, all right, eh?” 

For an instant Nelson’s grey eyes showed 
their colour but he did not speak. 

“Funny thing about us—living here—put¬ 
ting up with discomforts and paying high for 
them. Damned if we don’t seem to be sort of 
flattered by them, and their prices. Funny 
thing. Why the dickens do we stay?” 

“Exchange,” whispered Nelson. 

“Oh come off, Nel! We aren’t all just Tom¬ 
fool gamblers!” 

“No—?” 

“No!” thundered Seymour laughing at the 
noise he made. “Maybe it’s—the climate,” he 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 


5 


shivered. It was June and all but midday, and 
they were sleeping under blankets, and the 
green of the leafy trees showing like a contra¬ 
diction between the curtains. 

For an instant Nelson opened his eyes and 
peered at the magazine with its brightly 
printed cover showing up on the dark rug. 

“Maybe it’s enough, just living it out in the 
lovely place. Don’t ask me!” 

“I didn’t,” Nelson reminded him. 

Seymour sat up, irresolute and towselled and 
yawning from ear to ear. “June!” he com¬ 
plained, “cold as March.” He scratched his 
head, looking at the clock on his night-table. 
It was a little leather-cased toy his mother 
had given him. He groaned over the hour and 
turned the clock to the wall. Irritated he 
looked at Nelson, who was flat on his back and 
sleeping again. 

“Read the story, old man. It will do you 
good—’’and suddenly he stooped, and sent the 
magazine flying across the room. It flapped 
against the wall, then fell beside Nelson on his 
bed. 

Nelson turned his head, put out a long thin 
hand and gently smoothed the ruffled pages. 


6 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Seymour stood, yawning and stretching. 

“It’s the grim tale of an old bird and his be¬ 
loved wife. You are sure to be an old bird and 
you may have a beloved wife. For her sake, 
I’d hate having you fail. This old bird in the 
story fails. Read it!” 

Nelson put out his other long thin hand and 
lighted a cigarette. “What is the name of 
your story?” 

Seymour on his way to the bath-room, stood 
still rumpling his hair, and trying to remember. 
“Oh, I know, “Failure’s Wife.” Funny title. 
I don’t mean exactly funny.” 

“You never do,” murmured Nelson. “Who 
wrote the story?” 

“Dashed if I know. Never looked,” Sey¬ 
mour spluttered his answer from the bath¬ 
room, and followed up the confession with a 
great deal of shuddering under the cold douche. 

“You’d be more interesting at six minutes 
to eleven in the morning, to say nothing of the 
same significant hour of the evening, if you 
looked oftener at titles and their authors and 
less often at your damned brass-faced little 
clock,” said Nelson tranquilly. 

Seymour, wrapped in his bath-towel, drip- 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 


7 


ping water off his big young feet, dashed to the 
window and drew aside the curtains, fairly 
drenching the room with light. 

“Thanks so much,” smiled Nelson, “I like 
light, when it’s handed to me.” 

“Great day but funny weather. The sun’s 
shining like a new brass franc, but it’s so 
cold.” 

“Like an American sweet-sour sauce, or 
sugar and vinegar on tomatoes, eh?” com¬ 
mented Nelson. 

Seymour looked around at him as he dried 
himself in the sun. “Got a hump, eh?” he 
laughed. 

Nelson was lying with a magazine upon his 
breast, his thin arm folded across it. “I’ve 
read your story,” he said, his eyes closed, his 
voice half-sleepy. “I even know the man who 
wrote it, rather well. I’ve known him all my 
life. It is the sort of thing you’d call funny, 
if you knew how well, how long, I’ve known 
him. I only really came to know him while 
we were face to face, during the “great war.” 
That was the valuable thing I got out of it, 
knowing him. We were in the hospital to¬ 
gether. Both of us pretty well bashed up, and 


8 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


fed up. We weren’t homesick, for we knew 
our way about over here, and liked it. We 
liked it here better than there. We’d meant 
to stay on and play, so of course we stayed on 
and fought. We went in together in the first 
stormy days, before the long heavy rain and 
eternal mud had set in. We’re still in,” he 
shuddered, his voice so low that Seymour could 
not flatter himself that he cared whether he 
listened or not. “War-talk sounds odd now, 
but that’s the way it was.” 

Seymour, intrigued, came to the foot of Nel¬ 
son’s bed, stood drying his hair, listening. 

“I was the dutiful brute of the two,” Nelson 
went on. “I hated war less than he did. It 
killed him to kill. He had to confess himself 
constantly a fragile ass. He liked women, and 
dining out, and beautiful things, and clean 
fine hands. He’d had those sort of things 
all his life. He owned a satin-wood desk that 
somebody told him had belonged to Julie de 
Lespinasse. Until the war, he thought he could 
not write, except at that desk. He very much 
liked the woman in that story, the “beloved 
wife” of the “old bird that failed,” as you 
put it, Seymour. In real life she was twice his 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 


9 


age. An adorable person, beautiful, and silky, 
and gentle. She had a great deal to do with 
making him decent, or, intentionally so.” 

“What’s the great idea in keeping a man like 
that all to yourself?” Seymour’s voice was 
dry, a little hurt. 

“He’s so brittle,” said Nelson. “ ’Hates a 
row, and ruts. He has to be let alone. Curls 
up if he’s touched. He has rewritten the stuff 
he sketched then, in the hospital, and after, and 
has sold them rather easily. They have made 
no stir. A short story is likely to be just so 
much water in a basket. He is doing a novel 
now. ’Doesn’t give a damn about anything 
else.” He opened his long narrow grey eyes 
and considered Seymour, who was listening, 
his face working with revelation, his towel 
trailing absurdly about him. 

Nelson observed him appreciatively. “You 
look like an animated Autumn Salon,” he 
laughed. 

“Well, that’s an awful thing to say to a 
man,” said Seymour, then, seriously, “You 
seem to know this writer-chap very well?” 

Nelson got up very carefully and put his 
bolster and pillow at the foot of his bed, loos- 


10 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


ened the covers, then got in again, with his 
back to the light. “I’ll read this over again/’ 
he opened the magazine. “Interesting to see 
if I like it now as well as I did then. One 
changes,” he smiled, then added, “Fortun¬ 
ately.” 

“Why don’t you bring him to one of our 
Sunday night dinners?” asked Seymour still 
standing, puzzled. 

“I’ve thought of it,” Nelson shot his friend 
a glance. “But we’d bore one another, a lot 
of bank-pups and an author! We’d have to 
play up. He has to live in his shell, and we 
have to live out of ours, eh?” He opened the 
magazine and found his place. 

Seymour’s big hands clutched the foot of the 
bed on either side of Nelson’s pillow. He 
stooped, and over Nelson’s shoulder read, this 
time both title and author, ‘ “Failure’s Wife” 
by Richmond Nelson.’ 

For the moment the room was still except 
for the Sunday sounds that came in through 
the open window. Seymour came round to the 
side of the bed and stared down at Nelson. 
“You wrote the thing, Nel?” 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 11 

“Somebody had to, old man,” Nelson 
smiled. 

Seymour stared like a sleep-walker, “But 
your job—? You are perfect in your job. 
Better than any of us. When do you have 
time? When do you do it?” He slowly began 
to laugh. “That’s what you are up to when you 
disappear? And we thought it was some fool 
girl!” 

“It is infinitely more fatal, old man, than any 
mere fool girl,” said Nelson. 

“But where?” 

“I’ve a place across the river. The job pays 
for it.” His thin jaw set. “As to time, I take 
it. Time is any man’s you know. I haven’t 
luckily, the lighter vices, or they haven’t me. 
It’s a most interesting question just how much 
time the lighter vices take.” 

Gravely Seymour wrapped himself again in 
his towel and stood at the head of Nelson’s 
bed helping himself to a cigarette. “It’s no 
wonder you look off your feed. It accounts 
for your being so damned touchy. How long 
do you think you can keep it up?” 

Nelson gave an amused gesture. “Go along 
and shave. I want to read.” 


12 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“But a man can’t keep that up—two jobs 
as far apart—” 

Nelson broke in, “But it is just that that 
makes it possible. A clean cut, and,” he 
laughed, “so complete a change of air that it 
seems fresh. Besides, why not? All the art- 
game is changed. Artists and authors look 
like bankers. No more velveteens, no more 
long hair. I simply go “the whole hog” and am 
both one and the other. I am what I am and 
also what I appear to be. One of myselves 
pays the bills for the other, or has done until 
lately. It’s been about neck and neck the last 
two or three months.” 

Seymour stared, gave a gesture, failed for 
words. 

“You think it—funny?” Nelson laughed 
up at him. 

“No, I’m damned if I do,” said Seymour, 
walking heavily back to the bath-room, hunched 
in his towel, the fringe ends trailing, catching 
Nelson’s quick eyes, making him laugh. “Wait 
till I’ve got dressed. We’ll go into this,” said 
Seymour. 

“We will not,” said Nelson. “Not an inch 
farther than we’ve been in.” 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 13. 

Stolidly, with his jaw set, Seymour trailed 
his towel back to the bath-room. “Is that so?” 
he said without turning his head. 


FAILURE’S WIFE 
A Story by 
RICHMOND NELSON 

I 

It was Christmas week and she’d come down 
town in a taxi to do her shopping. Christmas 
bored her but she had gifts to buy for people 
whom it did not bore. She’d lunched down 
town, was tired, had found nothing to buy but 
trash and tinsel. A flurry of rain had driven 
her to the arcades of the rue de Rivoli. It 
was a handsome storm and it drew her eyes 
away from the glittering shop-windows to the 
skies above the trees in the gardens, where the 
heavy clouds were dashing rain down, drench¬ 
ing a light snow back into the earth, rolling 
over the pavements, great drops splashing and 
singing in with the splattering motor-cars. 

Being there, she drifted into Rumpelmeyer’s 


14 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


for her tea. Years ago, before the war, and 
before the shop had become an American pro¬ 
tectorate, she’d liked going to Rumpelmeyer’s. 
She had lived so long in Paris that her sense of 
the place was permanent and she shared resent¬ 
ment against these lighter “occupations” of her 
countrymen, especially of her countrywomen. 
But, at Christmas time the Americans were in 
Egypt, Algiers, Nice. Some of them were 
even at home. It was likely to be more like 
the old times, when Paris was visibly French. 

She chose a little table with one chair, a 
bachelor’s table. The place w r as lovely—a gar¬ 
den of women, all satiny and as bold as brass, 
and with their doll-like men. But she liked 
them and their gamey way of meeting their 
peace. Their new cynical peace. She thrilled 
to their intelligence that permitted itself the 
risk of seeming lightness. She closed her eyes 
a moment to catch the acid sweetness of their 
gaiety. It was like sitting by a fountain in the 
warm sun, whimsical breezes dashing the cold 
spray upon one, shocking exquisitely. Then 
there came two Americans into the place; in¬ 
telligent, important and tremendously well- 
dressed. Instantly they found her, recognized 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 


15 


her for a country-woman, included her with a 
flicker of gay warmth in their fine eyes. They 
were tall, fair, ample. They were “onto them¬ 
selves,’’ good-natured and curious as young¬ 
sters. They looked her over, friendly enough, 
but as if they’d strip her of shop addresses. 
Their own hats were lovely and priceless, and 
set above their flat-heeled American shoes, 
gave them a so amusing look of big school¬ 
girls on a jaunt. 

“You know, Dot,” said the younger one, the 
less married-looking of the two, “I guess we’d 
better cut out the tea and just have a n’ice 
cream. Tea takes so darn long. It’s one 
on the tea when it doesn’t. It’s miles down to 
that musty old Chatelet. I’ve simply got to 
hear that Kakin Adagio. I don’t know why I’m 
so keen on it, but I am. The show won’t wait 
for little old us, will it ?” 

Listening, lightly amused, she suddenly got 
their drift, forgot them in what they had to 
say. A concert? Chatelet? She tried to re¬ 
member what was going on, what day of the 
week it was.* She glanced at her wrist-watch. 
Music anyway. f She might have luck, might get 
a place. Shopping forgot, she paid for her 


16 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


tea, and in a moment was in a taxi, rushing 
down town through the spattering rain. 

II 

At the Chatelet she was able, luckily, even 
at the late hour, to buy herself a small loge. 
Shut inside its red-lined box-like walls, with 
its gilt-edged window open to the stage she felt, 
gaily, as if she’d bought herself a sort of house, 
a music-house. She put her fur coat, her hat, 
her gloves, her bag upon the chair beside her. 
She smiled and stroked the soft fur and 
laughed; her things looked so absurdly in her 
images. She’d been having her middle-aged 
Christmas blues and was feeling weary of 
foibles. She’d liked to have stripped off her 
rings and chains and bracelets, to have taken 
out hairpins, to have put her pretty high-heeled 
shoes under the edges of the fur coat. To be 
rid of harness for an hour. For an hour of 
music I 

“Centenaire de Cesar Franck,” she read at 
the head of her programme. But she’d forgot¬ 
ten—had meant to come. Thi^ was riches! A 
programme of his pupils’ work, friends of hers 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 17 


among them—d’Indy, de Breville, Kepin, and 
the rest. Then, to send the world back to the 
world again, the great symphony in R. Mineur, 
with Franck, himself on the solitary heights. 
She glanced curiously over the house to see 
if the two Americans had arrived. She found 
them in a loge like hers, across the house. She 
felt grateful to them, but they did not know 
her of course, without her hatl 

Even in the eliminating twilight of her forty- 
sixth year, she loved her music more than ever 
ardently. She drew her chair back where, 
sheltered from the great house, she could per¬ 
fectly see the stage. And the vast stage thrilled 
her with its music-racks, chairs, instruments, 
lights, all waiting for its musicians and its hour 
of voice. Why had no one ever painted a pic¬ 
ture of a stage like that, waiting? It was 
very like her own life, the stage so beautifully 
ready, so empty. Once upon a time she had 
loved a musician, and had waited till even now, 
for him. Now, musicians didn’t much matter; 
it was music that she loved. And, she laughed 
to condemn herself, always a Puritan. Even 
her way of having given up was a way of being 
true. This unexpectedly coming to music 


18 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

stirred her, brought herself up, quivering, to 
her hard-earned surface. 

Ill 

The musicians came on, the house darkened, 
the lights above the stage fairly drenching 
hands and linen, catching upon the rims of eye¬ 
glasses, rings, and the white pages of music. 
Their manner of settling, of tuning up, gave her 
a sense of perfect occupation, of the superb 
apathy of skill. 

“Kakin’s Adagio pour instruments a cords.” 
Lovely, lovely! She liked the American over 
there for caring for it, and liked her too, for 
not knowing why. Her eyes wide, her hands 
relaxed, she let go of focus, held to nothing 
in the world but the forest of bows and their 
clairvoyant hands. Suddenly, and wholly 
shocked by the rushing in of personality, she 
caught the full gaze of a violinist whose head 
was not bent, whose hands seemed so oddly to 
play alone. His head seemed, for the distress¬ 
ing moment, to lift over all the music and mov¬ 
ing hands, to jeer her gravity like an ogling 
serpent, while his voluptuous eyes laughed over 
her movement of trapped and outraged rapture. 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 19 


“All through my life, my life goes with me,” 
she sighed, and covered her ^yes with her 
hands. Surely she knew the man. His face 
was so oddly familiar—? But she could not 
know him. He was very young. Once she had 
known “everybody,” but now, slowly musicians 
had retreated from their life, their salon, and 
the worldly patrons and peacocks who support¬ 
ed music has replaced them. In their salon, like 
something dead and draped, stood a great vel¬ 
vet-covered piano, and upon it lay a violin case, 
locked. She could not have crossed the path of 
this young man, but what beautiful skill, and 
what perfect impertinence! 

She considered him, caring not at all what 
he might make of her considering. It was, 
after all, just the type that she knew. In pro¬ 
file he was like, so very like, her own husband. 
The type repeating, repeating. All over the 
faces there was the repetition, even as music 
repeats and repeats. In his gorgeous twenties 
her husband had looked as this man now 
looked, and had played, as this young man 
was now venturing to do, fervently, straight in¬ 
to her eyes. She knew now just how that sort 


20 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


of fervor is cheap; mere strutting and circus 
brilliance. Talent abused. She knew no trace 
of pride in being its object. She knew that her 
whitening hair looked blonde in the vast red 
and gold dimness; knew that she looked young 
for her age even in a midday glare. She wished 
that he knew and would let her be. The lights 
flared and fell, flared and fell. She slipped back 
into her loge as far as she could, only to listen, 
free of the young man’s high-poised head and 
ardent eyes. She saw her husband again, his 
cameo head lifted towards his heights, his 
bright halo of silver. There’d been a splendid 
time when he’d seemed to touch the fires of in¬ 
terpretation to light; had seemed to recreate. 
And then, something had happened, she’d 
never known just what. She’d lost him. She had 
ceased to be a mystery to him; ceased to hold 
him. Perhaps she’d been tiresome with her too 
great belief and ambition. She’d wanted reali¬ 
ty; he’d wanted mystery, the praise of shadows. 
It was inevitable. He’d turned away from her, 
found his mystery in other women who did 
not make him conscious of reality. Women who 
praised him, spoilt him, weakened him. He’d 
spent his strength in smiling upon them as this 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 


21 


young man was smiling upon her. There came 
a shameless time when he’d stop work to laugh 
with any woman. Even then he’d sometimes 
rushed the heights. Then he’d fall, and he’d 
fail to retrace the way, for he really did not 
know the way. She had struggled, had pleaded, 
she had striven against her own awakened 
spirit, trying to be all sorts of women to him. 
Then hope died its death. He’d inherited 
money—a great deal of money. He’d strutted, 
chattered, decked himself out, and he’d given 
over work entirely. And now, old, and afraid 
of himself in gallantry, he’d grown hard and 
mean. Cruel, to cover his shame in himself, to 
stiffen his thin-worn vanity. All of his baffled 
and irritated skill came forth, for just her, in 
his fine-edged meanness. And, what of her? 
Herself? In spite of it all, perhaps in pity be¬ 
cause of it, she’d trailed faithfully, all the way 
along his bright and chattering way of futility. 

He went on, this young man, playing there 
on the stage, ogling her. It hurt her to so 
understand him. He mattered no more to her 
than the discarded programmes, scattered over 
the aisles, squares of white on the dark red 
carpet. That he played to pattern was a mir- 


22 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


acle she gave thanks for. Then at last the 
final splendid symphony released her; made her 
think of Cesar Franck, of the solitary man, the 
artist working against the tide all his life; 
working serenely. At last she listened only, re¬ 
leased, detached. And when she came down 
the stairway into the brilliantly lighted exit, 
saw her ardent fiddler standing, in full glare, a 
broad soft hat shadowing his peering face, his 
hands posed, one glove on, one off, like Titian’s 
‘‘man with the glove,” she lifted her head that 
he might see her face and the lines that life had 
earned for her, turned that he might see that 
her hair was grey, not blonde, and she laughed 
with amusement when she saw him all but run 
to lose himself in the crowd. Then straight¬ 
way she forgot him, and she taxied up town to 
her home, her mind quieted and at peace. The 
storm had passed and a clear fresh early eve¬ 
ning sky shone over the gardens as she passed 
Rumpelmeyer’s again. It seemed so oddly long 
since her tea there in the early afternoon. 


IV 

The maid let her into her warm, softly- 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 23 


lighted, beautiful apartment. She stood, lis¬ 
tening to voices. 

“Madame has visitors,” said the maid dis¬ 
creetly. “Three ladies are in the salon—with 
Monsieur.” 

Over the silk curtains, through the glass 
doors, shone the lights. She went in, just as she 
was, in her hat and furs. And there he sat, the 
handsome ruin, surrounded beautifully, wor- 
shipfully, as if with tourists! 

Three of her friends they were, all Paris- 
Americans, circled in deep chairs about his 
deep chair. The light above him gilded his 
longish, waved, silvery hair. Against the vel¬ 
vety background of his mole-coloured waist¬ 
coat, his fine hands played with the ribbon of 
his eye-glasses. A little table centered the 
group, glittering softly with its decanters and 
glasses. Furs sagged richly over the chairs to 
the polished floor. One of the three, younger 
than the others, her chair close to his, dropped 
her hand from his arm, the glittering jewels 
the hand wore fairly crying the tale of where 
the hand had been lying, and her face gave 
a startled, silly, guilty smile. 


24 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“My dear!” he cried out at her, “where on 
earth have you been?” 

“I?” she smiled and gave her hands to her 
friends. “I’ve been—oh, ever so far away 
from here!” 

She laid her hat and furs aside, stood by a 
mirror, adjusted her flattened hair. She smiled 
at them in the mirror. How finished they were, 
she thought; how satiny, and silly, and beauti¬ 
ful, and sweet. And how they did love their 
chatter; loved being so tremendously in every¬ 
thing, so sure, so “au courant.” She looked at 
him and caught the reflected smile, his senile 
smile, and the ant-like glint of his dark eyes, 
ready to be mean. 

“My dear” he sent her a gay and gossipy 
laugh, “do spare us suspense. Do tell us just 
where. You have such a frightening way of 
not quite saying things!” 

She smiled at him. Really he was perfect in 
his way, a perfect failure at least. It was some¬ 
thing. She carried her hat and fur, to the piano 
and laid them beside the locked violin case. 
Her hand rested a moment on the case, touched 
the lock; she wondered if he even knew what 
he had done with the key. Then she turned, 


NELSON AND SEYMOUR 


25 


leaning in the curve of the piano, and she looked 
at him again, ever so lightly. “I have been at 
the other end of the world, listening to music, 
my dear. Listening to you, as you used to play 
to me when we were young, and beautiful and 
poor, and hopeful—” 


STRAWS 


Seymour, fairly resplendent for his Sunday 
of ease and food and girl, came back to Nelson. 
His hat on the back of his head, he stood, 
lighting a cigarette, watching Nelson. He was 
lying as if asleep. The clean cut edge of his 
light brown hair, his dark brown short thick 
lashes made him look, in his stillness and pale¬ 
ness, like a drawing of himself. He looked too 
old for his age—a man more made than in the 
making. “Feeling off your feed, old man?” 
Seymour asked with concern. He felt as if he’d 
never really seen this best friend of his, Nelson, 
before. 

For a moment Nelson’s eyes opened, sur¬ 
prised to responsiveness, giving Seymour a faint 
shock. “Yes. What of it?” he laughed short- 


STRAWS 


27 


ly, quickly on his guard. Then after a moment, 
“Who wouldn’t be, after reading over some¬ 
thing of yesterday’s work, fatally wounded, in 
print. Curious thing, the way one doesn’t quite 
do the trick.” 

“It’s very well done I think,” said Seymour. 
“Mystery to me. I creak a groan over a letter 
even.” 

Nelson studied the well-dressed, prosperous 
looking young man before him. “Naturally. 
It’s not your job. You are a clear case, a clean 
cut banker. It’s in you and back of you. Bank¬ 
ing. You’ll go to the top old man, and by 
Jove, you’ll look it, magnificently.” 

Seymour flushed. “Not very exciting, being 
so damn clean-cut. Everything handed to me, 
even the honors.” 

“Well, it’s great,” mused Nelson. “The 
little old war has tossed us all, bankers and 
poets, into the same dirty sack, eh? Dirt right 
into the bone. It’s done for all of our neat 
little differences. Everybody looks, and feels 
even, just like everybody else, now that we’re 
tossed out of the dirty sack and our straws are 
in the wind again. And the trouble is that the 
straws are not only dirty, but they’ve got mixed 


28 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


up, are sticking to the wrong men. And it 
looks like a kind of game, and men are grin¬ 
ning like new devils, and won’t swop back the 
other fellow’s straws. And the wind isn’t kind. 
It goes right on blowing in the same old way. 
Everybody is playing the other fellow’s game. 
Just for the fun of it. Even you, blessed old 
Seymour, success born in you, fairly handed to 
you; even you, finding yourself “too damn 
clean-cut!” It’s really great. You, resenting 
law and order!” 

“For law and order, are you?” Seymour 
grinned. But he felt embarrassed. Nelson, in 
the new cross-light of two careers, evaded him. 

“You bet your life I am,” said Nelson. “If I 
didn’t submit to order, where’d I be? I hate 
grubbing. It’s weak, no doubt, but I want com¬ 
forts. I can’t be happy and bathless. I want 
furniture, and air, and housekeeping. I like 
regularity in food, linen, and eating pleasantly. 
I’m in no puritanical revolt against disorder 
and its murky charms, but order is for me a 
gift-bearing process. It adds to my benefits. 
With all my heart I thank, and submit to—the 
Bank! I say—Seymour? Not a word of this 


STRAWS 29 

story-writing to the others? Not—a—word! 
You understand?” 

Seymour looked his disappointment. “I 
thought I’d tell ’em at dinner to-night. Have 
some champagne, eh?” 

“/ thought you would too, you duller,” Nel¬ 
son glared at him. 

“Why not? It would buck us all up. You 
seem to take it all pretty casually, but the rest 
of us—!” 

“Well it wouldn’t buck me up,” said Nelson, 
his brevity making for eloquence. “My name 
is there, always at the head or the tail of every¬ 
thing I print. Let them learn how to read. 
There isn’t a mother’s son of you that looks 
at an author’s name before he reads a story. 
Or after, for that matter.” 

“Is the place you work in far from here?” 
Seymour asked. 

“It is.” 

“It must be tiresome, coming back here late 
at night, to sleep?” 

“It is. But that’s that. I like sheets and 
hot water. And it is nearer the bank in the 
morning.” 


30 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“You’ll cut out the bank when you’ve made a 
go with your stories?” 

“You’ve no idea,” Nelson laughed very soft¬ 
ly, “how often I ask myself that. Just now— 
it isn’t the question. I’m doing a novel. A 
long one that will take a long time. ’Will want 
a lot of doing. Another is at its heels. I’m a 
bit bashed up you know, and need comforts.” 

“You couldn’t work here ? I’ll efface myself, 
and keep the others out,” he suggested awk¬ 
wardly. 

“That’s very decent of you, Seymour, but it 
can’t be done. Do you care about seeing my 
shop?” 

Seymour flushed and smoked hard. “Just 
ask me!” he said eagerly. “You’ll be on hand 
for dinner to-night?” 

“You could count on me at any dinner to¬ 
night that lets me out of moving, thinking. 
Something tells me that I’m going to stay right 
here all day.” 

Seymour sang a “so long then,” from the 
door and hurried away, already late for his 
Sunday luncheon. 

Nelson, alone, closed his eyes and thought of 
Seymour—restless, lately, as a pup wanting a 


STRAWS 


31 


master. Anxious, like a pup, and touching, too. 
A good sort of pup. He let his mind drift over 
the strange new problems: over his men friends, 
Paris friends, and Paris-Americans. He com¬ 
pared them, the Americans, with the French¬ 
men he knew. All of them, American or 
French, struggling with their readjustments, 
their complications, their mixed up straws. 
Restless, restless. 

He thought of the curious new softness of 
young men. In every cafe one saw them, faces 
and ways as soft as a girl’s, and the girls walk¬ 
ing by, as hard as nails. Girls refusing to 
be ever any more, the classical prey; men gone 
soft without their classical hunting to keep them 
in trim. The classical background was finished, 
was shot to bits. Not that Nelson lamented 
that, or resented in the least the modern 
softened men and hard, hard girls. He liked 
it, or he liked looking into it, getting at it, at¬ 
tending the wake of the old ways and means. 

He thought of a Frenchman he’d met one 
night lately, when dining over at the Rotonde, 
the moment’s favourite nest of thoughtful in¬ 
iquity and its trailing souls. The Frenchman, 
a lawyer, had been about Nelson’s age, and 


32 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


visibly, even more war-battered. One side of 
his face was a mere fabric of scars. He was a 
wizened, young-old, blue-eyed and bearded 
little “avocat,” even at dinner his portfolio with 
him, as if he never entirely left off work. He 
had a laughable way of speaking, thinking and 
moving in little gusts, then sitting mute and 
very still between times. After a dinner that 
had not gone too brilliantly they were all 
standing out in the night on the side walk again. 
Uneasiness and chattering possessed them at 
parting just as it had done, always does at 
meeting. The little avocat stood aside, think¬ 
ing, listening, then with a very high-pitched and 
puffy gust of laughter, as if he’d proposed 
himself an adventure for reasons very much his 
own, he’d led them to another cafe, a few doors 
away, “to see something.” There he had 
shown them three framed canvasses, “his own 
work”—the puffy, wizened little avocat’s own 
work! They were framed, and hung there, 
for sale! Every cafe on the left bank, where 
the artists gather, is now also a sort of picture 
mart, and, astonishing fact, the canvasses of 
the little avocat were no better, no worse, than 
the other things hanging about them, though 


STRAWS 33 

he never for one moment pretended that paint¬ 
ing was his job. 

Then, the dull little party about to scatter, 
wakened up. Really became interesting and 
significant. Faces reddened, or laughed, or 
wondered. There was protest astir. The 
young American woman who had given the 
party, a slim, bobbed, ear-ringed, gold slip¬ 
pered person, and wrapped about in a gorgeous 
evening coat, faced the little avocat. He was 
her lawyer. That was why he was there, at her 
party. 

“But, where on earth? When? When do 
you have time to paint? I never heard of such 
a thing in all my life. My husband is a lawyer 
in New York, and, believe me, he hasn’t time to 
even think about paint!” That she was even 
then divorcing him made him no less her argu¬ 
ment. 

The little avocat studied her, his blue eyes 
very grave. “What a pity for him,” he replied. 
“Over here we have our Sundays, our Saint’s- 
days, our “vacancies,” so that everybody has 
time.” He finished on a very high key, his 
voice rising after a happy convicting that, here 
at last, they had something on the Americans. 


34 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


At the dinner there had also been a young 
chap in tweeds, and he’d stuck very close in¬ 
deed to the lady of the gorgeous evening coat. 
Now, angry, he stood back for space. Though 
he looked like a stockbroker out in his business 
suit, he was really an artist. He was a young 
man of “metier” of belief in “school,” with 
his good shoes well planted upon the old, old 
road to Rome. The scarred face of the little 
avocat sniffed and quivered, and his bright 
blue eyes laughed with delight. “Will you kindly 
tell me,” came the challenge from the Roman 
road, “what you think you are doing to art? 
Putting your things up for sale! You, a law¬ 
yer! You and dabblers like you, are at the 
bottom of the whole horrible situation, I tell 
you!” 

“Oh, but I do sell them!” The little avocat 
fairly danced with delight and excitement. 
“Quite often, I sell! And why not, if they are 
liked, my pictures?” 

The young man came, fascinated if revolted, 
to the edge of his wide, straight open road and 
he peered a long troubled moment into the 
little avocat’s eyes. Then their laughter stirred 
his anger again, and he went back to the center 


STRAWS 


35 


of his road. “What would you have to say 
about it,” he demanded, “if I, who don’t know 
a blessed thing about law, were to come tearing 
into court among you chaps in your caps and 
gowns, knock over your chairs and mix up your 
papers, and begin pleading a case? How’d 
you like that?” 

“Oh—,” gasped the little avocat, looking 
like a wise little owl, out for a good time and 
daring to take darkness for light, “I think that 
it would be splendid—very good for us! We 
have gone on so very long, all in the same way, 
that it’s all become “a la cuisine,” you see? It 
might, if you would do that—rushing in and 
upsetting us—it might give us something new I 
Perhaps you will do it—when you are, one day, 
a little tired of painting? That is to say, of 
only painting. You surprising Americans!” 

Then the party had melted away. The lady 
in the gorgeous coat and the young man from 
the road to Rome, going away together in a 
taxi, the little avocat on the side-walk, listening 
and watching. Nelson heard the lady say to 
the young man, very softly, “Maybe he’s not as 
good a lawyer as I thought—?” 

Nelson smiled over the world. He’d seen 


36 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


too much of it for so young a man, thanks to 
the war. But he’d always been like two per¬ 
sons in everything, one of them looking on and 
able to smile over the troubles of the other. 
His magazine slipped from his hands, he re¬ 
laxed and sighed, and slept again. 


Ill 

MR. DUNBAR PRESENTS 

At seven-thirty Dunbar had not arrived and 
Seymour and Nelson were mixing the third 
cocktail. Dunbar had telephoned that he 
would be late, but that he was bringing some¬ 
one worth the waiting, “a peach.” Anticipa¬ 
tion ran higher as the cocktails went round and 
round. Chatham had brought a girl. He al¬ 
ways did. She was a little, slim, white-faced, 
black-haired, folded-up-looking girl, very beau¬ 
tifully got up and self-absorbed. She was not 
disturbing. She was Chatham’s girl, and no 
one else wanted her. Her name was Monique. 
Chatham, very fat, was already nebulous, and 
as red as Monique was white. Monique did 
not drink, knowing better. Nelson, because 
he needed it, took one cocktail, then stood off 
37 


38 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

waiting by a window. His thin white face 
glistened with fatigue, for an afternoon of 
writing had taken him by storm. The cool 
green of the leaves outside, patterned and 
played over by the street lights, gave him rest, 
hypnotised him with their cool endless repeti¬ 
tion. “A lullaby of leaves,” he called it to him¬ 
self, wishing that, for an hour his tired mind 
would stop its work, stop calling things by 
names and phrases. When tired, it was his 
torture, phrasing things. 

Then came Dunbar and his “Peachentered 
noisily, and with the exaggerated laughter that, 
gust-like, opens and closes doors upon stage- 
scenes and life-scenes alike. And Dunbar in¬ 
troduced his guest as “My old friend—not so 
awfully old I—Mrs. Raymond.” Elsie Ray¬ 
mond, standing to her splendid inches, garbed 
sumptuously in blue and gold brocade, her too 
much of bright blond hair bound tightly into 
a turban of metalic cloth, fairly warranted Dun¬ 
bar’s boyish strutting and Nelson’s murmured 
“Mr. Dunbar presents—” 

The young men rushed and burbled round 
her like waves round an obstacle. Elsie, her 
eyes bright with the love of a good time, 


MR. DUNBAR PRESENTS 39 


glanced them over, laughing gaily to make 
things go. They all talked at once. Chatham 
got forth a maudlin “B’ Jove, enchanted l” and 
sat back against Monique, his fattish pink 
hands flat on the table before him. Monique 
moved a little away from him, reddened her 
mouth with a lip-stick out of her mole-coloured 
sack, looked Elsie over, then sank into pose 
for a long patient evening. 

“I told Jo’, 17 Elsie went on, her eyes fixed 
inquisitively upon Monique, “that it was too 
awful to come like this. S’posing you all hate 
me, eh? But Jo said it was alright. You 
aren’t to go to any bother. I lunched at two 
and ate the shop out of house and home. I 
tead at five, and had two strawberry tarts and 
two lovely cakes. All I ask is a chair. How 
those lovely looking French slippers do hurt! 
And oh my heavens—is it a cocktail that I see 
before me?” 

“No’p,” she broke in, answering Seymour 
for Dunbar, gaily, “Jo hasn’t been keeping me 
all to himself. I’m no secret. Just landed 
Thursday. Came on the Olympic. Some 
canoe, eh?” 

Nelson had come forward, been presented, 


40 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


and stood amused, where he could watch her. 
“Crossed often?” he asked her, picking up her 
gold mesh bag, heavily set with turquoises, 
which she’d dropped as she stooped to unfasten 
a band of her beautiful blue slippers. 

She looked at him, at her empty glass, at 
him again. She had a way of thinking a 
moment before she answered a question. She 
laughed and crinkled the painted dark about 
her gorgeous blue eyes. “Can’t you see it 
sticking out all over me that this is the first 
time, and that I’ve been trying to buy every¬ 
thing in sight in twenty-four hours? Thanks— 
I’d love another,” and she held her glass out to 
Seymour. 

Monique opened her eyes and watched Elsie 
drink with the brightened gaze of one lovely 
woman who sees another taking up the way 
of certain destruction. 

“Good night!” Elsie murmured to the 
others, looking back at Monique, “don’t she 
talk English?” 

“No,” murmured Nelson, “nor American, 
nor even French, except in self-defence. She 
doesn’t like to talk. It’s tiring.” 

Elsie’s head lifted and she looked at Dunbar, 


MR. DUNBAR PRESENTS 41 


then at Monique again, and her blond effulgence 
was warmed with an oddly young blush. “Oh 
is it!” she said aloud, but she thought of some¬ 
thing she’d have to say to Jo Dunbar on the 
way home about the kind of people she cared to 
meet. Wasn’t the girl all right? Luckily, 
Melanie began serving the dinner. And 
Melanie was a precious old reprobate and 
wholly melted to Elsie’s splendours. By ten 
o’clock Chatham’s head was on Monique’s 
shoulder, and Monique herself somewhat more 
frankly significant. Elsie took a long look at 
the two of them. “I’ll tell Jo Dunbar where 
he gets off for bringing me here with a street- 
rag!” she resolved. The “street-rag” had 
taken only a little wine at her dinner, her 
activity all bent upon her vermilion lip-stick 
and her yellowish powder. Nelson drank less 
than the others but he drew her out, made her 
talk more than she wanted to. He stirred her 
instincts to a dim sort of warning, made her 
feel that he was laughing at her. Who and 
what were all these men and the girl, the street- 
rag, anyway? She looked about the room. A 
nice room, nothing very wonderful about it. 
They were a “well-dressed bunch” she thought. 


42 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Recklessly she looked full into Nelson’s eyes. 
“What is it all about?” she asked him. 

Nelson cupped his thin hands about a match 
and lighted a fresh cigarette, the flare show¬ 
ing his thin face all keen and amused. He’d 
been drinking more than usual, and he was 
talkative. “I heard a good, queer little story 
the other day that is, maybe, the answer. An 
answer, at least. An old French lady of the 
provinces, a hot-headed, stingy old lady, lost 
her husband. She had loved him and she was 
horribly lonesome. She didn’t know what on 
earth to do with herself. She began thinking 
that she’d got to die, too. She’d be with him 
again then, anyway. But what was all the 
money going to do for them then? She went 
off her head with reckless plans. A chapel 
over their grave—that was what she could do! 
She’d spend the money she could not take with 
her, on wonderful graves. She’d build them 
a tomb to keep off the eternal rains. She got 
drunk with the idea, went more and more mad. 
She became a miser in everything else, to have 
that much more to spend on the tombs. Noth¬ 
ing was too good. Someone stuffed her up with 
tales of the wonderful marbles she could buy 


MR. DUNBAR PRESENTS 43 

in Egypt. Nothing so beautiful anywhere else 
in the world. The price of the marble didn’t 
phaze her, but the distance, the cost of getting 
there, was awful. She investigated, she wor¬ 
ried, she lost sleep. She ended by taking 
a third-class passage out in order to have that 
much more money for her marble. She started 
away—said good-bye to her home, to her hus¬ 
band’s temporary grave. They sailed. Bad 
weather—wind and heat. She died on board- 
ship. Being a third-class passenger, they would 
not, could not, keep her body, and she was 
buried at sea. “And that—” he paused, “is the 
end of the story.” 

“Oh my goodness,” gasped Elsie, her face 
comical under her silver turban. She gave a 
gesture like a swimmer going down, her tur¬ 
quoises and diamonds catching the light. “Is it 
as bad as all that? 1 thought,” she laughed, 
as if laughing might save something, “that you 
all came, and stayed, for drinks?” 

“Is that why you have come?” asked Sey¬ 
mour, glancing at Nelson with a smile. 

“Me? No,” she grew grave, sitting there 
in all her expensive clothes, looking like a 
plump young child dressed up. “I came to get 


44 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


one of those easy French divorces that every¬ 
body’s talking about, if you must know. Don’t 
I look it? Hadn’t you guessed it?” She 
laughed recklessly, her recklessness hurting 
herself, and she flushed and turned her glass 
about, and wished she hadn’t said it. 

A shocked silence answered her, all the 
tipsy eyes in the room upon her,—and Nelson’s 
eyes, cooled and suddenly veiled, the most try¬ 
ing of them all. 

Elsie laughed again to keep up her courage. 
She wished she hadn’t told them. What did 
they care ? “Not that I am crazy about getting 
a divorce. Not on your tin-type!” She forced 
herself to return Nelson’s icy smile with inso¬ 
lence. 

“My tin-type?” Nelson lifted his brows. 
“I’m awfully sorry but I’m afraid I haven’t one. 
Photography has gone rather far ahead, you 
know. And, if you don’t mind, I’d rather you’d 
have your divorce on someone else’s tin-type. 
I’d be sensitive about going as far as that!” 

Elsie, her hands in her lap, her eyes wide 
open, looked at Nelson and listened; then she 
gave a tremendous, quick, ungoverned sigh. 
“I guess you think me an awful hick, don’t you? 


MR. DUNBAR PRESENTS 45 


Well—I am! A hick from Hickville. But if 
you think there is anything funny about getting 
a divorce, then you’ve got another think coming 
to you!” She was thoroughly and frankly 
hurt. 

Nelson glanced at her as if she’d startled 
him. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “Do for¬ 
give me?” He laughed and stiffened his 
shoulders. “Aren’t we all just a little stewed?” 

She smiled, childishly responsive, and glad to 
forgive. 

“You see,” Nelson’s slim long hand played 
over her turquoises and gold vanity trinkets on 
the table by her coffee cup, “I am always so 
irritated by turquoise blue!” 

“You don’t like turquoises?” she asked him, 
frankly shocked. 

“No. I don’t like turquoises. But,” he 
smiled, “what of it?” 

“You have got a grouch, Nel,” said Dunbar, 
sending Nelson a glance of warning behind 
Elsie’s silver-swathed head. 

“Oh,” said Elsie, “I don’t mind. I’m used 
to it. It isn’t to be hoped that I married the 
only man on earth with a cronic grouch, is it?” 

Nelson laughed and leaned his arms upon 


46 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


the table, looking beyond Elsie and the smoky 
room with its flushed tipsy faces, out into the 
leafy night. “You mustn’t mind me,” he said 
to her with a sudden friendly smile. “You 
must learn to be very patient with me; with 
all of us; even when we are ill-natured, or don’t 
like your turquoises. You see, for all our pre¬ 
tending, we are nothing but a lot of poor devils, 
on our way to Egypt, some of us travelling 
third, after wonderful mythical marble. And 
it looks stormy, and it’s damned hot, and we 
don’t feel awfully well—” he laughed. 

“Good night!” said Elsie with an exagger¬ 
ated shudder. “If I’m to come along often, 
we’ll have to make it a sort of a syndicate.” 
She smoked, and drank, and chuckled over 
her idea. “Jo tells me he’s going to rush me, so 
you’ll all have to come along. But you can 
take it from me that we won’t travel third. 
And we won’t go down. We’ll hit the Marble, 
and if we like it, we’ll buy it all, and have it 
sent home, eh?” 

“Some quite worth while people prefer tra¬ 
velling third,” said Nelson dryly. He rose and 
went back to the window, irritated. 

Elsie, her wealth of fair soft arms upon the 


MR. DUNBAR PRESENTS 47 

table, watched him, her cigarette in her fingers, 
the insolence of timidity forcing her to be very 
bold and hard. “Well, you’ll have some trouble 
to make me believe that.” He glanced at her, 
then quickly away again. Elsie bit her lip, and 
with flustered irritation, felt herself blushing 
hotly. 

Suddenly Nelson faced her, laughing at her, 
but in keen earnest all the same. “You are go¬ 
ing to want to ‘travel third’ with the rest of 
them, too,” he told her. “You stay long 
enough and you’ll trade all your turquoises for 
one third-class ticket! You’ll see. You’re 
caught, even now,” he laughed. “You’ll see” 
Then Nelson saw that no one minded what he 
was saying; saw that they thought him drunk. 
He gave a gesture of disgust and went back to 
the window. His mind was blurred, ideas zig¬ 
zagging like vines across, the endless leaves at 
the window troubling him. “That’s just why 
we are here,” he stuck to it, held to his words 
one after the other. “Not so much to hit the 
marble, as you so uncomfortably put it, as to 
learn how to travel third. Third! At the very 
bottom again, with the bereft best of ’em, in a 
broken up old world—” 


48 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

Elsie chuckled, watching him. “We’re act¬ 
ing like a Cotter’s Saturday night, eh?” She 
sang gayly, “Oh, father, dear father, come 
home with me now—” 

“It’s not Saturday night,” said Nelson curtly, 
then stood facing the air and praying himself 
to be still. 

Then Monique told Seymour that they’d bet¬ 
ter get Chatham outside. And Chatham 
speechlessly looked it. 


IV 

CAFfi DE MADRID 

A half hour later, Nelson, who had disap¬ 
peared for a while, came back into the room 
with Elsie’s coat upon his arm. The others 
had gone, except Elsie, Dunbar and Seymour. 
They could hear them all laughing down in the 
street below the open window, trying to get the 
collapsed Chatham into his taxi. Elsie sat 
staring at the table, turning her glass about, 
smiling, forgetting to go home. She blushed 
like a child caught in mischief at the sight of 
her coat. “It’s dreadfully late,” she stam¬ 
mered, “I’m too awful. I told you I was. I 
don’t know when to go home even!” 

“I have to propose,” smiled Nelson, stroking 
the thin velvet and silver over his arm, “that 
49 


50 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

we four adjourn to a cafe where we may talk 
and breathe the air.” 

“Oh, a lovely idea,” said Elsie, quickly ap¬ 
peased. 

In no time a taxi was rushing them through 
the night to the Bois. They did not talk; the 
night air was upon them, they were meeting it, 
coming back to themselves, each in his own way. 
Then, at a little table out of doors, music and 
dancing going on in the brightly lighted restau¬ 
rant, stars serenely gleaming overhead, they 
looked at one another, smiled refreshed, ready 
to begin all over again. 

They smoked and chatted, and noted their 
neighbors. Nelson looked off at the shadows 
a while, then he said, “Dunbar knows, of 
course, but why not tell Seymour and me about 
yourself—why you are here ? Let us know you, 
too—your whys and wherefores? Something 
tells me,” he said lightly, “that we are going 
to see a lot of each other. The four of us. 
The Syndicate. Why not? I know, of course, 
that one doesn’t ask a butterfly where she got 
her wings, but—it is a perfect night, a perfect 
hour and place for a story. A story about 
wings. The good tales have mostly been told 


CAFE DE MADRID 51 

like that. Let’s start an Arabian Nights of 
our own. Why not?” 

Elsie watched him, fascinated. “You mean 
—tell you about Bill and me?” she asked, ab¬ 
sorbing him. 

“Why yes—about you and Bill,” he smiled. 
“It isn’t curiosity, you know. You are really 
so beautiful out here in the night in your blue 
and silver. A mere man wants, really wants, 
to know what has made you. Then perhaps 
he can guess what you really wish you were. 
If Dunbar knows it all he may toddle inside 
and dance. We can get along without Dunbar, 
eh Seymour?” 

“Dunbar,” said Dunbar, “knows no more 
about it than you do. I haven’t seen the dear 
girl since she was sixteen, and in long golden 
pigtails 1” 

Nelson turned and looked oddly at Dunbar 
through the threaded light. “That makes a 
thrilling vision,” he turned to Elsie. “One can 
take a golden hair to start with, and recon¬ 
struct, you know. You must have been superb 
in golden pigtails, Mrs. Raymond.” 

Nelson had a way of saying “Mrs. Ray¬ 
mond” that made Elsie sit up and want to be- 


52 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


have herself. “They were perfectly good pig¬ 
tails,” she murmured. She watched the dancers 
inside the cafe for a moment. People were 
looking at her. She sensed her power and 
loved it. “Some life!” she said softly. 

“You see that tall blue-eyed young man, ask¬ 
ing the American girl to dance?” Seymour 
asked Elsie, while Dunbar put a cigarette into 
her holder for her. 

She nodded. “He’s good-looking. Sort of 
Chinese-looking,” she hazarded. 

“That’s clever of you,” commented Nelson. 

“He’s a Russian, with a name to make Rus¬ 
sians sit up,” said Seymour. “He’s devastated 
—not a sou, not an inch of earth left. He was 
brought up like a doll. They pay him fifty 
francs a night to dance out here. I know him. 
He says, ‘No, I don’t like it, mais que voulez- 
vous? I could be a chauffeur. Many of my 
friends are chauffeurs, but I’m not very strong 
and the climate is hard for me.’ I asked him 
if he didn’t hope to get something back; if it 
wouldn’t change soon again in Russia. The 
poor devil looked into space. He looked Slav¬ 
ic then, if you like, his jaw, his cheekbones, his 
queer eyes. ‘Revolutions take a very long 


CAFE DE MADRID 


53 


time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps—a change—in ten 
or twenty years.’ I suppose he’ll just have to 
dance it out!” 

Elsie shuddered. “I’m sorry for him,” she 
said, “but I’m not crazy about the idea of 
anybody’s being payed to danced with me” 

“You dear, good young child,” said Nelson 
softly. 

Elsie flashed him a laugh. “Paris makes me 
feel young, and goody—and so foolish!” she 
said. “You may not believe it, but when I 
first met Bill Raymond I was as slim as that 
girl who is dancing with your Russian. Honest¬ 
ly I was!” 

Said Nelson, promptly, “There’s one thing 
I think you’d never be able to do.” He held 
her eyes, lightly but persistently. 

“Me?” She was all inquisitiveness. 

“Be—a liar,” he answered. “I mean, not 
even a polite liar. If that brilliant gift had 
been added to the rest of you, you’d have 
upset these crazy times. Any times. You are 
absolutely disarmed with honesty. I believe, 
actually believe, that you were as thin as that 
girl, once upon a time! Tell us,” he smiled 


54 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


again, “where did you meet your Bill Ray¬ 
mond ? And more about your golden pigtails ?” 

“Oh out there, where I live,” she said ab¬ 
sently. “Or, where I did live. I feel to-night 
as if I had moved. Maybe I have? You see 
it was before the war, two years before, and 
Papa wasn’t rich then. We were just comfy, 
good-enough folks in a small enough town. Jo 
knows,” she smiled at Dunbar. “Jo’s was a 
best family, and Jo and I never met except at 
high-school. It’s different now. Papa had a 
hairpin factory. It’s a funny thing to have, 
but somebody has to make the darned things!” 

“It’s simply wonderful,” said Nelson unbe¬ 
lievingly. 

Elsie thought it over. “Mama didn’t think 
so,” she chuckled. “Our town’s awfully pretty, 
a river, and beeches and maples, and fields and 
groves all around. Before the war we used to 
have a good time out there. We know it now. 
And there was another little town not far off, 
a jiggetty little street-car running between. 
And out there in the meadows, was a country 
college. You ought to see it now!” she 
laughed. “Just booming, every which way! 
Then, it was shabby and needed paint. It was 


CAFE DE MADRID 


55 


a sort of surprise package, you know?—you’d 
go out to pick daisies and find a college!” 

“Mama was born in another town,” she went 
on, warming to her story, helped to franker 
frankness by the night, the place, the oddness 
of the Russian nobleman, dancing for fifty 
francs a night. “Mama’s a climber for fair!” 
she laughed. “But Papa’s so sweet, she just 
fell in love with him in spite of his hairpins. 
Papa inherited the factory. The worry of 
Mama’s life has been what everybody calls 
our ‘hairpin-money.’ That gets Mama’s goat.” 

“She had a regular mania for educating us 
kids above hairpins. My sister died. Too 
bad; she was like Mama, and might have made 
her happy. Mama just hates me. My brother’s 
a slacker, and—I’m me. Poor Mama. It was 
a bad day for her pipe-dreams when she sent 
me out to that little old college. She wanted 
to send me east; to Wellesly, or Vassar. But 
Papa wouldn’t have it. He backed me up, dear 
old Pop. He said that I was the only ornament 
in the home that didn’t make him think of the 
price. I was a holy terror then, and just to 
spite Mama, dressed as much like a boy as I 
dared. 


56 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“I hadn’t been in the college three hours 
before I’d fallen heels over head in love with 
Bill. He was my botany teacher. I liked 
botany—funny thing to like, but flowers are 
so lovely, aren’t they?” She paused a moment 
to think how lovely they were. Flowers! The 
night, dark and rich about them, and all the 
drinks made thinking of lovely things and 
flowers, easy. “And I wasn’t the only one. 
All the girls in the class were crazy about Bill.” 

“Botany was just a bi-product for Bill. His 
job was scientific farming, and he was simply 
a cracker-jack. Awfully clever. He had light 
hair and he was tanned, and blue eyes—tur¬ 
quoise blue,” she laughed and shot a glance at 
Nelson. 

“Oh, if that’s the reason,” Nelson tempor¬ 
ised. 

“I’m afraid I liked turquoises even before I 
liked Bill,” she laughed. “Bill had a way that 
simply finished me. He’d be awfully solemn 
for a long time, and talk botany, then all of a 
sudden he’d smile. He was like a big baby when 
he laughed. I was just mushy about him. And, 
I wore my hair in two long pig-tails—it’s so 


CAFE DE MADRID 57 

awfully heavy, you know—and the pig-tails did 
for Bill!” 

“Of course Mama simply had fits. She said 
that, with my hair and eyes and skin—my 
creamy skin— isn’t it all too silly?—I could 
shine anywhere, and she simply would not have 
me marry a clod-hopper farmer who’d have the 
spades and hoes in the parlor! He was like 
that,” Elsie laughed. “All rooms looked alike 
to Bill. Of course Mama simply drove us to¬ 
gether, and we ran off for long walks in the 
woods, and sometimes we talked botany and 
sometimes we didn’t. We were in love, and 
heady. At last, to keep us from eloping, or 
worse, we got a home wedding out of Mama. 
Papa liked Bill well enough, but he had no 
control over Mama. Nobody has. Not even 
Mama!” 

“It wasn’t too gay—that wedding. But we 
didn’t know it, Bill and I. I guess if Mama’d 
let us be, and the war hadn’t happened, and 
Papa hadn’t made such oodles of money, Bill 
and I’d have got on alright. But Mama can’t 
let anything be. She decided to make Bill over 
into a swell. But the family, except Papa, 
with - its pockets full of hairpin money, its 


58 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


social ladders, its little ideas about who to 
know and who not to know, simply made Bill 
sick. Then, slowly, he got mad . That was 
where I first got acquainted with Bill Ray¬ 
mond! He got mad slowly, but he got it for 
keeps. Bill’s no fraud, and he’d got waked up 
to the sort of family circus we were.” 

“Then came the war, and Bill saw his chance 
and he took it. He chucked us all and came 
over here. He’s still here.” She was silent 
for a moment, her beautiful hand with its 
turquoise and diamond rings posed upon her 
vanity case, the smoke of her cigarette rising 
straight and fine in the still air, her glance 
turned from the young men, the hectic dancers, 
the lights and jazz, to the night in the still 
trees. “It’s dollars to doughnuts he’s looking 
for your blessed ‘marble of Egypt,’ and riding 
third-class too! I guess, from things I hear,” 
she added wistfully, “that poor old Bill’s been 
up against it.” 

“I was such a fool. I was hurt, black and 
blue. Mama was stubborn and mean. Papa 
was sorry for me, and awfully irritating. I 
got heady and pretended not to care. I let 
Bill go! I just froze up, inside the sulks. I 


CAFE DE MADRID 


59 


didn’t thaw when he left. I couldn’t. For a 
while I was paralyzed. After he’d gone I cried 
all the time. Papa got sick of it. But Mama 
stood pat. She knows a lot, Mama does. She 
knows that people get over things.” 

“Bill got wounded and was sent home for a 
short leave. We sort of patched things up— 
but everybody had changed. Everybody ex¬ 
cept Mama. Bill thought we should go into 
the war. I mean,” she said, “he knew that it 
was up to us. He was simply fine when he 
talked about it! I can just hear him and the 
things he said. Mama didn’t think so. That 
was once in her life when Mama didn’t see 
something that was good for her. How they 
fought about it, Mama and Bill. I can just 
see him in our parlor, telling Mama where to 
get oil. Then he came over again—everybody 
mad—even worse than the first time.” 

“Then we went in. In two years our hair¬ 
pins had been turned into wire war-things of 
all sorts, and we were so rich we didn’t know 
what to do with ourselves. Mama went abso¬ 
lutely nutty with joy. She went in for war 
babies, of course. She had to. But every three 
or four babies looked like a lost diamond to 


60 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


her. Automobiles, a big new house, and clothes 
and diamonds. But people came to the house, 
and asked her and Papa to their houses, and 
that was all she cared about.” 

“When the war was over, Bill came back, 
but not to us. He went right out to the college. 
The little college was booming, like us. It had 
got a big endowment, new paint and a lot of 
new buildings, and a “get green quick” cam¬ 
pus. He moped about. His job was filled of 
course, and the man was as good as Bill, and 
less of a nuisance. They’d outgrown him. Bill 
said so himself. I think that, maybe, Bill had 
outgrown his job. Anyway he and his old 
job couldn’t seem to get together again. He’d 
changed while he was over here.” 

“Then I did the wrong thing,” she sighed. 
“I’m quite a wonder at that, anyway. I wrote 
him a note and asked him to meet me in the 
grove where we’d met at first, to talk things 
over. I didn’t want Mama to interfere. I 
drove out in my electric car, and I suppose I was 
rather dolled up, but I didn’t think of his 
minding. It made him furious. He simply 
cussed me out. I cried at first, then I got mad 
too. After all, there is no crime in a quick little 


CAFE DE MADRID 


61 


car, a nice frock and my pig-tails pinned up. 
I don’t wear diamonds to breakfast, the way 
Mama does.” 

“Then I got off my trolley. I put up my 
head and decided to show Bill a thing or two. 
I flirted outrageously with a little fool whose 
father had also hit it rich. A regular little 
house-pet. I drove him all over the place in 
my car, and in Mama’s limousines. There 
wasn’t any real harm in it,” she paused as if to 
be sure, laughed oddly, and then went on, “but 
Bill didn’t see it that way.” 

“One fatal night Bill came into our big 
new garden. I’d give a lot to know what 
made him come. But I suppose I never will 
know. It was too awful! He caught little 
Bobbie with his little arm round me. I’m such 
a big thing that I should think he’d have seen 
it was just silliness. But Bill was too mad to 
see. He took Bobbie up like a kitten, by the 
back of his neck, and he ducked him in our new 
fountain. I thought he was going to drown 
him, and I tried to help Bobbie. Bill put me 
aside like a nothing. Me! He took Bobbie 
by his collar and me by my sash, and marched 
us into the house. I hadn’t a collar on, you 


62 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


see. Far from it! Papa was sitting alone in 
his new library, reading the newspapers. Bill 
planted us there, and then went to find Mama. 
He just drove her in, my soft, little brother 
yapping at her heels. And then Bill stood there 
and actually told them just how he’d caught us. 
He was so mad he didn’t know what he was 
doing. Really, I was just letting Bobbie kiss 
me, and thinking how little it mattered to me, 
and supposing that that was the way men as 
foolish as Bobbie felt about it when they kissed 
girls. But Bill didn’t know that. Then my 
brother, to get even with me for a lot of things, 
took Bill’s side. Old Papa sat still, his news¬ 
papers all over the floor around him, looking 
through the lot of us as if we were ghosts. 
Mama called Bill a savage, and worried about 
Bobbie’s catching cold. Mama had little Bob¬ 
bie all numbered for my second, I guess, and 
she didn’t want him to die of pneumonia.” 

“Then all of a sudden, something happened 
inside my head. I simply got all lit up. I stood 
off, and ordered Bill and Bobbie out of the 
house, and told them to stay out. They went, 
and right away! I cleaned up my little brother 
and sent him up to bed, and told him to say his 


CAFE DE MADRID 


63 


prayers and to leave me out. I told Mama she 
was a fraud, and a silly, dressed-up, pathetic 
little old thing. Mama stood up for herself 
with a glance that ought to have killed me, then 
she walked out of the room with her hand on 
my little brother’s arm. Then Papa and I 
locked the door and opened the windows, and 
we had a cry together and we wished we were 
poor again. Papa’s a hick, if ever, but he’s just 
as sweet as his clover,” she laughed softly. 
“I’m going to bring Papa over to see Paris 
some day I” 

After a moment’s pause and the absent 
choosing of a fresh cigarette, Nelson holding 
the flame, Elsie took a deep breath and went 
on. 

“Bill came back here; never stopped, I guess, 
till he got here. And now—I’ve got to find 
him. Not to bother him. I’m not that kind. 
But just to be sure he’s alright. If he wants me 
to, I’ll get a divorce. Then everybody can be¬ 
gin all over again.” 

“You know where he is?” asked Seymour, 
after a moment. 

“My lawyer is finding him for me. Bill’s 
not to know; not even if he’s alright. I had 


64 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


a sort of hope that some of you might have 
run across him? But I’m already getting onto 
the fact that Paris is a big proposition and all 
Americans don’t—” She laughed and with a 
gesture, let it go at that. 

“We are twenty-some thousand strong in 
Paris now,” said Dunbar. 

“If you want to call it strong,” put in Nel¬ 
son. 

Seymour eyed his friend. “Yes,” he stuck 
to it. “I call it strong.” 

“Nobody knows,” Elsie confessed, looking 
from one to the other, lost in her thoughts of 
Bill, “how awfully I just want to see old Bill. 
I’ve got an address—” She opened a little 
gold-backed ivory tablet. 

The three men looked curiously, Elsie hold¬ 
ing the little tablet close to the pink shaded 
light. 

“It’s the other side of the town,” said Dun¬ 
bar. 

“It’s in what they call “The Quarter,” isn’t 
it?” asked Elsie. 

Nelson sat back, shocked and amused to see 
their ‘Arabian Night’s’ story fitting together. 
The address was in the street where he had 


CAFE DE MADRID 


65 


his studio. Would the plot ‘thicken’ he won¬ 
dered, in a criss-crossing of paths, or would he 
and Bill Raymond live their problems within 
a stone’s throw of one another, and never 
meet? “I know the quarter, even the street, 
rather well,” he said, with an odd glance at 
Seymour. 

It was growing late, people thinning out, 
auto-doors slamming, cars gliding up and tak¬ 
ing their men and women away under the rose- 
flushed veil of the Paris night sky. 

Elsie rose to go. This time she’d make the 
first move. Her rising made its stir. 

“You’ve told us a wonderful story,” said 
Nelson, while Dunbar and Seymour wrapped 
her light cape about her, and got her trinkets 
together. She was very handsome, and tell¬ 
ing her story had moved her, had made her 
something more than handsome. “I’ve all but 
talked your three blessed heads off, haven’t 
I?” she smiled. 

“You have,” agreed Nelson, “and a good 
thing it is, for we will all have to have another 
evening at once, so that you may talk them on 
again.” 

They stood in the bright light a moment 


66 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

waiting for their taxi. “I’ll tell you what,” said 
Dunbar, “you must all dine with me, say on 
Tuesday night. Then Elsie, perhaps you’ll 
have news of Raymond. You must let us big- 
brother you along, you know. I feel already as 
if it were up to us.” 

Elsie looked at him oddly. “Jo Dunbar, I 
believe you’re less of a snob than you used to 
be!” she laughed into his eyes. 

“But haven’t you heard?” Nelson was very 
grave. “That’s what the war was for; to take 
the snobbery out of Jo Dunbar!” 

“I’m hearing a whole lot of things to-night,” 
chuckled Elsie. She gave her hand to Seymour 
and Nelson, for they’d decided to walk home. 
Dunbar climbed into the taxi beside her. The 
two young men stood back, their hats in their 
hands, as the taxi started, everything looking, 
as Elsie thought, with a happy thrill, “just like 
a cover on ‘Vanity Fair!’ ” The light from the 
restaurant fell brilliantly upon her silver- 
swathed head as she turned and smiled another 
good-night, over her shoulder. 

The two young men walked down the Avenue 
du Bois, under the starry night. The warmth, 
the leaves and stars weighed down their words. 


CAFE DE MADRID 


67 


Their voices failed in all the leafiness, some¬ 
how, to carry. They walked, eyes wide open, 
hats in their hands, seeing little, feeling the 
night as it seemed to feel them, merged in the 
shadows till they felt little more substantial 
than the beautiful, spacious, deserted way ap¬ 
peared to be. “Dunbar’s started something, 
eh?” yawned Nelson. 

“Quite a beauty, eh?” said Seymour absently. 

“Astounding,” admitted Nelson. “The top- 
knotch of everything that’s wrong. Our na¬ 
tional black-eye on its first trip abroad. Fright¬ 
ening. And damned conspicuous. But promis¬ 
ing. The most promising thing I’ve ever met 
in all my life.” He yawned into* the darkness 
and laughed at himself, at everything. A 
bewildered laugh in the leafy darkness. 

“Promising?” Seymour peered at him. 
“Promising what?” 

“God knows, old top,” said Nelson gravely. 

Then Seymour met a girl he knew as they 
were crossing the Etoile, and Nelson went on 
home alone. 


V 

NELSON CONFESSES 

“Awful hot—” complained Elsie, reddening 
her mouth and whitening her nose, while the 
men ordered the dinner. They were in a little 
room overlooking the Quais, at ‘La Perouse,’ 
and the light was summer twilight, irritating 
and penetrating. 

“Yes. Very,” murmured Nelson. 

Elsie considered him wistfully. “Cross?” 
she asked him. 

“Yes. Very,” he repeated. 

“We’re off!” chuckled Dunbar, looking at 
the two of them. 

“We are not,” said Nelson, then turning to 
Elsie with the quick smile that always won her, 
“have you found Mr. Raymond?” he asked 
her. 

68 


NELSON CONFESSES 


69 


“Mr. Raymond!” she mimicked him. 

“You might let the poor girl have her dinner 
before you begin your asking,” said Seymour. 

“You know, old man,” added Dunbar, “our 
Elsie’s no willing slave. Look out or she’ll 
leave us for Deauville! Be awful here, without 
her, in this heat. Serve you right, I must say.” 

Elsie smiled good-naturedly. “Yes, I have 
found him,” she told Nelson, “and he’s all 
right.” 

“Quick work,” commented Dunbar. 

“Bill wasn’t hiding ” said Elsie with a flare 
of unreasonable indignation. 

“Who said he was?” Dunbar patted her 
hand. “Don’t you go and be cross now. You’re 
the light of our lives. Seymour’s and mine, 
anyway.” 

“He’s in Paris?” Nelson asked, ignoring per¬ 
sonal diversions. 

Elsie nodded. “He got back, but he was 
all but broke, poor Bill! He took some sort 
of an office job. He had to, to get by. And 
he found his girl again,—his war girl. I’ve got 
no kick coming about his having a girl. I was 
just a fool. I—still am,” she laughed unstead¬ 
ily. “The girl’s a good sort. I hear she cooks 


70 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


and darns for him, and all. They were awfully 
poor, I guess. I drove by the place where they 
lived. A hole! y) 

“If,” said Nelson, dryly, “you live long 
enough, you may come to realize that important 
human beings are living in “holes” of that sort. 
People it will be to your advantage to know. 
If they have time—” 

“Third class holes all lined with wonderful 
Egyptian marble, eh? You’re jumpy to-night, 
it seems to me,” remarked Elsie, nibbling her 
hors d’oeuvres and sipping the delicious white- 
gold wine. 

Nelson flushed and ran his hands over his 
smoothly brushed wavy brown hair. “You must 
pardon me,” he said, more frankly than peni¬ 
tently. “The night is rather—jumpy, isn’t it?” 

Elsie looked at him gravely. “It is,” she 
agreed. “But you’d better get hold of yourself 
right now, for I’m on the edge of being jumpy, 
too. There’s an awful lot of me, when I am 
jumpy.” 

Nelson murmured something inaudible. 

Elsie laughed at him, then half turned away 
from him to the others. “It seems that, one 
day at the office, one jumpy day,” she paused 


NELSON CONFESSES 


71 


to glance at Nelson, “poor old Bill got mad 
over some finniky thing in his job, and all but 
pulled the roof down. He gets smothered 
like that in the house. He got fired. He was 
down and out, but the girl stuck to him. I guess 
she must be a good sort. Then,” she looked at 
them questioningly, “Bill ran across a man 
named Cosgrieve. Did any of you ever hear of 
him?” 

“John Cosgrieve?” asked Dunbar. 

Elsie nodded. “That’s his name. My law¬ 
yer tells me that Bill is lucky, that Cosgrieve is 
the best ever?” 

“One of ’em, anyway,” Dunbar conceded. 

“He’s awfully rich?” she asked. 

“Yes my dear. I venture to say he could 
buy you out to-night, and on his way home, buy 
a steamship, and forget to add you in,” said 
Dunbar. 

“He’s beat me to it with Bill,” she con¬ 
fessed. “Well, anyhow, money’s the thing. 
For all Bill’s high and mighty scorn, it took 
somebody’s money to save him. I guess,” she 
said shrewdly, “other money than mine looks 
different to Bill. Maybe it’s the hairpins. It’s 


72 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

the devil, money, eh? Hairpin money, any¬ 
way.” 

“Oh come, come,” said Nelson quite gently. 
“It’s only the devil when you haven’t got it. 
One hates a motor-car when one stands in the 
street and takes the dust.” 

“Come along with the story,” urged Dunbar. 
“I don’t mind owning that Cosgrieve’s about 
my ideal, and from what you say of Raymond, 
they ought to hit it off.” 

“I don’t mean that Bill isn’t earning his 
money,” Elsie said eagerly. “He wouldn’t 
just take anybody’s money. Not Bill.” 

“You know,” Seymour bent across the table, 
his dark face alight, “I’ve got so keen to have 
Raymond make good, from all you’ve said 
about him that I’d feel as if I’d failed myself 
if things went wrong. Some pretty fine chaps 
have zigzagged over here since the war, you 
know. Just sunk down, tired, and willing to 
live it out on next to nothing. Of course a 
failure’s a failure, or a fool’s a fool just the 
same as ever, but one’s got a new feeling about 
it, somehow. Sort of responsible, every fellow 
for the other fellow, sort of thing. Maybe it’s 


NELSON CONFESSES 73 

patriotism. Funny thing, patriotism. Awful 
when it’s cheap, but—!” 

“Cheap?” querried Elsie. “You mean when 
people wear flags?” 

“Lordy,” laughed Seymour who was not a 
talker, “I don’t know what I mean. Ask 
Nelson!” 

“I had lunch with Mr. Cosgrieve to-day,” 
said Elsie casually, munching olives, watching 
for her effect. 

“The dickens you did,” said Dunbar. “You 
fraud—!” 

She nodded, her eyes laughing. “You see, 
Cosgrieve met Papa on a big wire deal. They 
were in charge of something together. Of 
course he liked Papa, so he wants to be good 
to me. It’s funny—just like a sort of a fate— 
Cosgrieve and Bill getting together. You see, 
Cosgrieve has bought a place over here; miles 
of land, and a castle or two. He’s putting bath¬ 
tubs into his castles, and wants to cultivate his 
land. That’s where Bill gets in!” 

“Well, that is quite b dutiful,” said Nelson 
absently. “Plot within plot.” 

“It’s lucky anyway,” she said, watching Nel¬ 
son absently. “Cosgrieve tells me he bought 


*74 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


the place for a song, but I guess it was more like 
an opera-score, eh? The long and short of it 
is that Bill’s gone down there, the girl along, to 
oversee the place. As Cosgrieve says, or as 
Bill says, to make it bloom. He took them 
down in his car to see the place first. Bill 
wouldn’t budge without the girl. Her name’s 
Denise. He said they sat together on the back 
seat, both looking city-pale, and never talking a 
word all the way. But he said when Bill got in¬ 
side the property and began seeing what could 
be done with it, he simply went crazy. They 
are down there now—living. Cosgrieve gave 
them a house. There are stables too, and Cos¬ 
grieve has some horses, and he says Bill just 
lives on horse-back. I’ve simply got to see 
him, and then—” 

“Then—what?” Nelson shot her a kindly 
but keen glance. 

“Oh—” she gestured, the light bright on her 
rings, “I’ll fade out! Like any old blonde girl- 
in-the-movies!” 

“Fade out? You?” Dunbar laughed and 
patted her hands. “You’ll buy a new hat and 
get engaged to one of us. Any one you like!” 

“Not if I see you first,” said Elsie. “I 


NELSON CONFESSES 


75 


mean,” she went on, “that I’ll ‘fade out’ as far 
as Bill is concerned. A divorce ’ll be the best 
way, then he can marry his girl and get square 
with himself.” 

“Be sure first that he wants to marry her, 
my dear,” said Dunbar. 

Elsie observed him. “Funny. That’s what 
Mr. Cosgrieve said, too. But, Bill’s crazy 
about her? I guess I’m a hick all right.” Her 
words faltered and the light showed the bright¬ 
ness of tears across her eyes. “I’ve made up my 
silly mind,” she said, “to come over here bag 
and baggage, and stay till I’ve got my eyes 
open. It’s going to be very hard going, but I’m 
going to do it. I’m going home to pack up my 
past and bury it. Then I’m coming back. And 
you just watch me!” 

“Shall you come back third-class?” asked 
Nelson smiling into her eyes. 

Elsie turned fully and met his cynical eyes. 
“No,” she told him. “My past was third-class, 
thank you. I’ve had enough of it. When 
you’ve really had it, you’re not so crazy about 
it.” 

“I beg your pardon,” said Nelson. “I really 
quite love you, Mrs. Raymond, when you hit 


76 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


back. You do it—beautifully. And sometimes 
you take me much too seriously.” 

Seymour broke in, impatient with Nelson’s 
eternal sharp-edged lightness. His heavy young 
face was dark with eager confession. “You 
can’t realize what a serious thing it is—coming 
over here to stay. Better think twice before 
you burn your home bridges.” 

“Twice?” sighed Elsie. “I think about it 
all the time!” 

Seymour kept at the subject, bound to make 
Elsie listen to him. “It’s rotten being home¬ 
sick. Be worse for you than for us; you with 
nothing to do. You don’t realize. You can’t. 
You’re just a tourist. You wait till you’re lone¬ 
some someday—” 

“But I am lonesome, all the time; right now 
even,” said Elsie so gravely, that they failed 
to even smile. 

“It depends upon what you want,” said 
Nelson. “It’s serious, damned serious, being 
transplanted. And you,” he laughed holding 
her glance, “back in your beautiful head, with 
all your money, want, as sure as fate, out of 
Paris, just what your mother wanted in her 
little town. Isn’t that so?” 


NELSON CONFESSES 


77 


The angry color surged over Elsie’s face. 
“It is not so,” she gave it back to him. “I 
want,” she gestured as if she were smothering, 
“to be free. To get away from all of 
that. Honestly I do! It’s my chance. Why, 
I can go all over the place here, all day and 
all night long, and not a blessed soul whispers 
“hairpins.” I want to get an apartment, and 
keep a house in my own way. And to have 
friends. And maybe—” she smiled suddenly, 
and very sweetly, and she looked fully into 
Nelson’s eyes, daring to be wholly frank, “may¬ 
be I’ll find out what’s the matter with turquoise 
blue, and learn how to behave myself!” 

“You are a dear!” said Seymour with his 
warm brown-eyed smile. 

“You are indeed,” sighed Nelson. 

“I’m not, I am not!” said Elsie, “but I do 
just dreadfully want to be! If you knew how 
I get red, alone in the dark, over the breaks 
I make!” 

Nelson watched her thoughtfully. “You are 
a precious problem, aren’t you? A very social 
problem, eh?” 

“Chuck it, Nel’,” said Seymour flushing. 
“What’s the matter with you anyway?” 


78 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


For a longish minute the two young men 
looked at one another. Then Nelson said, 
“I’m simply a damn fool, Seymour. What’s 
the matter with you?” 

“Now,” said Elsie comically, “everybody’s 
jumpy except Jo Dunbar!” 

“I’m saving up for my food. My eye,” he 
whispered boyishly as the door opened and the 
actor-faced waiter bowed himself in and pre¬ 
sented a steaming plate. “And people hunt 
round for reasons for living over here! Look 
at that bird, the sauce, the crockery!” But the 
others cross like big children, ate for a while 
without talking. Nelson was very silent, and 
the others chatted after a while letting him be; 
chatted casually, the perfect food bringing them 
back to well-being. 

All through the dinner Nelson was irritable, 
restless. He laughed at Elsie, threw the light 
up on her, and put her in the wrong until pro¬ 
test from Dunbar and Seymour went close to 
anger. And then, as usual, Elsie sided with 
Nelson and called herself “too many pounds 
of hick.” That seemed a bit thick to her de¬ 
fenders, and the dinner did not go too well. 
Nelson sat by the window and between the 


NELSON CONFESSES 79 

dessert and coffee he played with the leaves of 
a note-book. It was a battered old note-book, 
full of loose, odd ends of paper. He was ab¬ 
stracted, not aware of the irritation all about 
him. “Got some letters to write?” Elsie asked 
him flippantly. 

“You know,” he said rising and looking at 
her vaguely, then less vaguely at Seymour, 
“I’m tired, damn tired. If you don’t mind, 
I’m going to toddle along. I’m smothering in 
here. I’ll walk a while, then turn in.” He 
looked again at Elsie. “Seymour will tell you 
what a wreck I am sometimes, if you don’t be¬ 
lieve me. Ask him. Good-night.” And he 
went, as if they were all forgotten even before 
he’d got outside the door. Then they saw him 
below, crossing the street. He stood a while 
by the river wall, then they saw him walk slowly 
away, his hat in his hand, toward the Boule¬ 
vard St. Michel. 

Elsie, distressed, observed her reduced 
forces. “Did I—rough-house?—or say some¬ 
thing too awful?” 

“No, no,” said Seymour, “I’d tell you some¬ 
thing to make you understand Nelson better, 
if I hadn’t given my word. But it’s the very 


80 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


truth, he’s “tired, damn tired.” He got badly 
bashed up in the war and he’s not as hard- 
shelled as the rest of us, to begin with. You 
mustn’t mind anything he does, or says. I 
forget it myself sometimes. He’s irritating. 
I’m sorry I got mad at him to-night. Why do 
you let him talk to you as he sometimes does?” 

Elsie thought it over, then looked at Sey¬ 
mour with her amazing frankness. “He makes 
me so mad sometimes that I want to just kill 
him, but, you know, I don’t believe he’d bother 
saying all those horrid things to me if he didn’t 
like me, would he?” 

Dunbar chuckled, and Seymour smiled at 
Elsie. 

“What have you got up your sleeve about 
Nelson, old man?” Dunbar asked. “Is our 
perfect darling leading a double life?” 

“Double?” Seymour thought it over. “He’s 
leading ten lives, poor devil.” 

Elsie looked at Seymour and thought of 
Nelson. She smoked, wondering what sort 
of a double life they meant. She sat back 
from the table a little, wondering if she dared 
ask. The air was heavy; great piles of clouds 
were banking up behind the sycamore trees 


NELSON CONFESSES 


81 


along the river. All the noises in the street 
seemed to double, as they do before a storm. 
She fanned herself with the printed souvenir- 
fan the waiter had given her. She dropped the 
fan and stooped to pick it up. And there on 
the floor at her feet lay a leaf of paper, written 
over in a small stubby hand. She stooped 
again, but Seymour’s hand touched the paper 
first. “Sketch for play in three scenes.” was 
written at the top, and underneath that, a title 
“Friends, or Something.” Elsie had read that 
much before Seymour picked up the paper. 
“Nelson must have dropped the thing,” he 
said, folding it up. “I’ll give it to him.” 

“Nelson?” Elsie looked wonderingly at Sey¬ 
mour. “Is it his writing?” 

“Yes, it is,” said Seymour, shortly. 

“It said, ‘Sketch for a play,’ ” she insisted. 
“It can’t be his—” 

“Can’t it?” smiled Seymour. 

“One of those ten lives you just mentioned 
cropping up?” laughed Dunbar. Nothing 
either interested or troubled Dunbar at the 
moment of coffee after a really good dinner, 
and he spoke without thinking. 

Brusquely the door opened, and Nelson him- 


82 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


self came in. He glanced over the table and 
saw him paper in Seymour’s hand. “I dropped 
that paper, under the table I suppose ? Thanks, 
Seymour—” He put his hand out to take it, 
but suddenly he relaxed, sat in the chair by 
Elsie, looked from one to the other of his 
astonished friends, and the paper on the table 
before him, and laughed. It was not a mirth- 
inspiring laugh, and the three faces went on 
watching him. “God,” he whispered at last, 
“What an egotistical ass I am! Making a fool 
secret of things like that. Read it if you like. 
Read it aloud. Rub it in. One of you can sit 
on me to make me stay and listen!” 

“I’m damned glad it happened, old man,” 
said Seymour, ringing and ordering a coffee and 
cognac for Nelson. “Brace up, then read it to 
us yourself. Why not?” 

“You—write things? Plays? Really?” 
Elsie asked timidly, unbelievingly. 

Nelson looked at her, flushed and said, 
“What of it? It’s a job, like another. Avery 
exigent job, too. That thing—anything a 
man writes, in that stage, may be just dribble. 
That’s why I was so upset over your possibly 
finding it. Mere vanity, eh?” He smiled, 


NELSON CONFESSES 


83 


looking out of the window at the trees along 
the river. “You know,” he turned to Elsie, 
“I’ll confess something else. I’ve a studio, a 
“hole” as you call such places, in the same 
street and all but next door to the other hole 
where your Raymond lived.” 

“Oh, that’s too wierd!” Elsie looked and 
looked at Nelson. “You know,” she sighed, 
“I never met a-n’author before! Will you 
really read it to us?” 

Her voice made Nelson flush. “You make 
me ashamed of myself,” he said. “I’m not 
worth it. The thing is nothing. Just an idea. 
I’ll give you other things to read. Read it, 
if you like. I noted it down while waiting for 
you here, and I left you to go to a cafe down 
the river and write it—. Go ahead—read it! 
Read it twice, and rub it in. I’ll read it to 
you. There’s only one person on earth that 
I’ve ever read stuff too, but she’s—different. 
It will be good for my silly, secretive soul to 
have to read the thing to you I” 

“I s’pose,” said Elsie absently, “that she is 
a person who knows a lot?” 

“Yes,” Nelson smiled. “And what sEe does 


84 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


not know she understands.” Then, after a 
pause that forbade more talk of her, he read 
his sketch to them. 

SKETCH FOR A PLAY 

Two simple, everyday good people, a man 
and a woman, are working side by side at the 
same job, something dull and clerical. They 
two love two wonderful and gifted people 
whom they support and give liberty to express 
themselves in unrenumerative poems and pic¬ 
tures. Over their work they confess and boast 
of their precious burdens, their priceless treas¬ 
ures, their two geniuses above earning. They 
build a dream upon their hard, common work 
to comfort it. They will get together, one 
night, with their starry-eyed treasures, and will 
make a feast. Week by week they lay aside a 
sum to pay for the feast. Everyone is to be 
glad, to eat a great deal, to drink ever so little 
too much, their precious ones to speak wonder¬ 
fully, to make them proud; to make them all 
laugh with happiness, like four children playing 
together. 


NELSON CONFESSES 


85 


—Scene Two— 

The feast—the starry-eyed two are brought 
together by their proud and eager toilers. Too 
eager. The meeting for the precious two is, 
for them, revelation. It is a crossways at a 
crest, the thing they’ve been watching for, the 
reason for having endured the supporting of 
their clumsey and irritating toilers. They sit 
side by side, treat their slaves as kings and 
queens treat their servants. Their hands touch, 
they speak in words the others do not know, 
their eyes say the rest. The slaves sit at the 
foot of the table, dull, heavy, helpless,, hurt. 
Left out. And in the dead of night, the two 
starry-eyed ones leave them, give them patient 
smiles for recompense, set out hand in hand, 
to take their eyes out to the stars for mingling 
of light—of eye-light and star-light. 

—Scene Three— 

The merciless morning sun finds the two 
slaves, huddled close, faces lined with tired 
sleeplessness, an apathetic waiter handing them 
the bill for the feast. They look at it, reckon 
it, pay it, an identical wistfulness upon their 
two toilworn faces. They rise, steadying them¬ 
selves, with their lumpy fisted hands upon the 


86 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

disordered table. They look at the disorder: 
emptied dishes, crumpled linen. They go out 
to their day’s work. They have never, in all 
the scene, looked at one another. 


“You see,” smiled Nelson, fitting his sketch 
back into the rings of his notebook, “what a 
scrap of paper it is to have made all the fuss 
about?” 

“Oh—” said Elsie, looking at Nelson, but 
not listening to him, “I can just see them. It’s 
like pictures—” 

Nelson’s long thin face was glistening white. 
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s what I wanted 
you to do.” 

“Oh my goodness,” she breathed softly. 
Words, even Elsie’s words, forsook her. She 
held her hands together in her lap, and she sat 
back against her chair like some big sweet soft 
thing against a board. Then suddenly she 
laughed, really happily, as if she’s discovered 
something she wanted, had been hunting for. 
“That’s why you are sometimes so—wonderful, 
and sometimes so—mean, eh ?” 

“Well, old man,” said Dunbar, “if I weren’t 



NELSON CONFESSES 87 

shock proof, I simply couldn’t stand it. Had 
any success with the writing? I mean—” 

“I’ve sold some things,” Nelson looked at 
him, smiling faintly, “If that’s what you mean 
by success?” 

“ ’Fraid it is,” laughed Dunbar, “What’s 
your idea, old man? Why—two jobs? Ser¬ 
ious—about the writing—?” 

Nelson mused. “I’m still in the Bank,” he 
murmured, “And I haven’t yet pleased myself, 
out of it.” 

And then the light outside yellowed, and the 
black clouds came on with a rush. It poured. 
Torrents of rain, till the leaves flew and fell, 
the streets ran, and the air was filled with the 
pungency of wet dust, wet earth. The drops 
drummed and splattered and drowned out 
other sounds. The four friends looked out 
while the air cooled off. And when the storm 
had passed, the twilight had gone with it and 
the summer night was there, lovely and refresh¬ 
ing, stars laughing far off, farther off than mere 
storms. And the four smiled at one another, 
new friends and better, for confession and the 
summer rain. 


VI 

BATIK 

It was late afternoon, and late June. Sun¬ 
light, like golden mist, was spraying over Paris. 
Even the shadows were warm, and glowing in 
reckless, truth-telling light. A taxi stopped be¬ 
fore Fouquet’s, and Elsie and her three young 
men climbed out. They’d been to the races, and 
were tired and thirsty. They dined together 
now, night after night, and Elsie ruled it— and 
she could be invincible—their dinners were 
“Dutch.” It added a note of vagabondage, 
gaiety, freedom of speech. 

“I’m not coming to your Sunday dinner this 
week,” she told Seymour, over her porto blanc. 

“But why on earth not?” he demanded. 
“Why should we have a dinner without you?” 

Elsie blushed but stuck to it. Chatham was 
88 


BATIK 


89 


always there, with his girl, and last Sunday 
night there had been another girl, and more 
obvious. It hurt her feelings, and for that very 
reason it had been hard for her to say so. They 
thought her—Dunbar and Seymour, and per¬ 
haps Nelson—a “good sport;” thought she un¬ 
derstood, or didn’t care, didn’t notice. The 
girls behaved well enough, drank and laughed 
much less than she did, but Elsie had her air- 
castle, and just now, she had no women friends 
to walk its rooms and gardens with her. She 
saw a space, and interval of darkness, between 
her hectic present and the castle of her dreams. 
These men all had mothers and sisters and 
cousins, in and out of Paris, too. Why did 
she never meet them? “I’m not crazy about 
Mr. Chatham and his—friends,” she blushed. 

“You are perfectly right not to come, Mrs. 
Raymond,” said Nelson as sympathetically as 
she could have asked. 

She gave him a grateful smile. 

“But, what’s the idea?” protested Dunbar. 
“Those girls—! Elsie wanted to see a bit of 
life.” 

Elsie laughed at him with courage backed 
by Nelson’s sympathy. “The trouble with you, 


90 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Jo Dunbar, is that you haven’t got a feeling to 
your name. And the trouble with me is that 
I’ve got too many.” 

“Oh Elsie darling!” Dunbar pretended to 
be enormously hurt. “How can you, when you 
know how I love you!” 

“Yes,” she said, “I know just how!” 

Nelson shifted his long, grey-flannelled legs, 
and his face worked faintly with the disapprov¬ 
al she always sensed from him when she’d been 
crude—too frank—had liked or said wrong 
things. 

“Why Joey Dunbar!” came a high thin voice. 
“I must at least speak to you!” The three 
men rose as an oldish woman dressed in mole 
and citron yellow batik came from the wide 
walk, under the awning, to greet Dunbar. She 
took Dunbar’s hand in both her own, and her 
loose sleeves fell back, showing ivory bracelets 
that clattered softly up and down her thin 
arms. Her hands were small, and were still 
very lovely. She wore pretty mole-coloured 
shoes and stockings. She was sweet and odd, 
and likeable. “Now, Joey dear, I must write 
your mother about meeting you, if I ever do 
write.” She laughed into his eyes, her face 


BATIK 


91 


crinkling with fine little wrinkles. Then, over 
the high bridge of her fine nose she gave Elsie 
a keen scrutiny. 

Dunbar presented “Miss Hope,” and tucked 
her, protesting but delighted, into a chair be¬ 
tween himself and Seymour. “You are Amer¬ 
ican, aren’t you, Miss Raymond? You are 
so blonde, you know, I thought you were Eng¬ 
lish, at least until I really looked.” 

Elsie looked oddly irritated. “I am Mrs, 
Raymond, and I am one hundred per cent. 
American,” she answered. 

Miss Hope, for an instant, lifted her lorg¬ 
nette, paused, then turned fully to Dunbar, as 
if Elsie’s answer had been, not only full, but 
perhaps superfluous. 

Nelson, faintly smiling, diverted Elsie with 
a fresh cigarette, which he put into her little 
amber holder for her. He offered one to Miss 
Hope, who, to Elsie’s wonder, accepted it, and 
smoked as if she’d been smoking all her life. 
“And a long life!” Elsie thought to herself, 
not at all sweetly. 

“It’s too lovely, dear boy, meeting you like 
this,” Miss Hope’s eyes crinkled. “This time 
I’ll easily remember to write to your mother.” 


92 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“I should hope sol” Dunbar crinkled back 
boyishly. 

“Now Joey,” she shrieked softly, “it isn’t 
nice of you, rubbing it in about my new name I” 

“But,” Dunbar put back his hat and laughed 
into her eyes, “You know I wouldn’t!” 

“I know you would, you dear!” declared 
Miss Hope. “Thank you, a cafe-creme, 
please.” Then she turned suddenly to Elsie, 
becoming wholly amiable. “Mrs. Raymond, I 
appeal to you. An old, old maid, who has a 
job, you know, (I make batik) has a right has 
she not, to henna her hair and take a new name 
that goes with her job ? Do defend me!” 

“Why not?” said Elsie. She could think of 
nothing else to say. 

Miss Hope’s glance poised slantwise on 
Elsie’s diamond rings. Her eyes, like blue 
moons, turned from Seymour to Nelson, and 
fixed at last upon Nelson who smiled back at 
her. “You know what our James Russell Low¬ 
ell said, in his essay on Keats? ‘You cannot 
say a thing is Keatsey. Fate likes fine names.’ 
My poor name was Hubb. Sarah Hubb. Now, 
it is Sally Hope.” She gave a comical sigh. 


BATIK 93 

“To have said one of my batiks was Hubby . 
Hope is better for a job name, isn’t it?” 

“It’s altogether a splendid name,” said Nel¬ 
son, clearly delighting in her, wholly turned to 
her. 

Elsie stared at Nelson and gave it up. Could 
he really like the frumpy, cracked old rag—? 
She looked again, thinking of the empty rooms 
of her air-castle. Their dreamed-of furniture 
fitted badly with Sally Hope and her lemon- 
yellow batiks. And Nelson seemed to like her. 
The silly, frumpy little thing! “Some life,” 
sighed Elsie to herself. 

“You were lucky,” Miss Hope beamed upon 
Elsie. “Some nice person changed yours for 
you, though no doubt your own was sweet 
enough to start with.” 

“It wasn’t bad,” said Elsie, then in spite of 
herself she added, “Not as bad as Hubb.” Nel¬ 
son glanced at Elsie, and by his lifted brows, 
she told herself, made her feel “as if she’d 
slapped a baby.” “Hope’s a n’awfully pretty 
name, anyway,” she added, and blushed. 

Nelson ignored her, Dunbar seemed amused, 
and Seymour seemed unaware. Miss Hope 
played with her washable yellow gauntlets. 


94 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“How does one change one’s name?” quer¬ 
ied Nelson. “Isn’t it an endless bother?” 

“Yes,” Miss Hope laughed, “but despera¬ 
tion carried me through. I went to a woman, 
you know?—one of those persons who reduce 
one to a chart, then make a sum of one’s facts 
and one’s luck, add one up, then convert the 
answer into letters, and there one is I You 
know,” she wailed plaintively, “one simply 
could not go on signing batiks with Sarah Hubb, 
though I know it does seem a silly thing to have 
done. Then new passports and papers I It 
was really a dreadful nuisance.” 

Miss Hope wore several rings upon her very 
slender old fingers. They were old rings, rich 
and soft-looking and they puzzled Elsie and 
made her look with new doubt at the two enor¬ 
mous solitaires she herself was wearing. Head¬ 
lights they were, and they’d cost her a pretty 
penny. 

“I’d not have the courage to do it again,” 
Miss Hope laughed. “I felt like a criminal, 
hiding something.” 

“You should have told me” chuckled Dun¬ 
bar. “We could have got married and di¬ 
vorced. Dunbar’s a lovely name, I think I” 


BATIK 95 

Miss Hope beamed upon him. “I should 
have thought of that, Joey, but I didn’t!” 

“I see,” said Dunbar, “that you are still col¬ 
lecting rings?” 

“Oh yes,” she said estatically, “I do so love 
my rings. I bought this one yesterday—isn’t 
it too lovely?” She slipped a ring off her fin- 
erger and laid it on the table before them. 

Nelson picked it up and bent towards Elsie 
with it, the late afternoon sun catching upon 
the old square-cut emeralds and soft pearls. 
“It is very beautiful,” he said, laying it before 
Elsie as if it were, for her, an opportunity. 

Elsie picked it up, her great platinum-set soli¬ 
taires flashing. With the common but irresist- 
able humor of her sort she laid the ring down, 
turned her own blazing stones into her palms, 
then picked the delicate thing up again. “Now,” 
she laughed, “maybe I can see it.” 

They all laughed with her, then bent over 
the ring, while Miss Hope, who knew about old 
rings, pointed out the values, its hand-worked, 
tender old gold, its beautiful detail. “I do so 
hate platinum and all of its hard, white, safe 
perfections,” she said. “You must forgive me, 
Mrs. Raymond, but when I think of the lovely 


96 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


things you could have for one of those big dia¬ 
monds of yours, and how beautiful you’d be in 
them, I could cry! Of course,” she smiled 
sunnily, “diamonds are an investment. But I 
can just see you with old, old pearls, and that 
golden hair of yours!” 

Elsie, her eyes fixed upon the little ring, upon 
Miss Hope’s finger again, sat with her hands 
in her lap, and sighed. It was a sigh that her 
kindness could only ignore. Except Nelson. 
His exasperating smile played from the lovely 
ring to Elsie’s hands and seemed to catch her 
sigh in mid-air, to torture it, to confess aloud 
its meaning. 

“Do you still paint?” Dunbar asked Miss 
Hope, to change the drift. 

“Oh yes” she breathed, “and the same 
funny little ‘old hat’ sketches I always did. 
They used to be thought clever. But now, they 
look—oh dear! Not that it matters how they 
look! I paint abominably, as anybody’d know 
I would do,” she smiled. “But I love it almost 
as much as my rings. Do you like painting, 
Mrs. Raymond?” 

Elsie saved herself with desperate frankness. 


BATIK 97 

“I don’t know one blessed thing about it,” she 
said. 

“Oh?” Miss Hope was thoughtful. Then 
she turned the drift. She was a disillusioned 
woman, and with a sigh and a smile, she let 
the useless details pass. “What a dear, crazy 
world it is !”"she smiled maternally. She passed 
her hand, gleaming with its fine old relics, 
across her eyes, to break the mesmerism of the 
glare. “Yes, Joey,” she said softly, “I’ll re¬ 
member, now, to write to your dear mother; to 
tell her of meeting you.” She laid her hand 
gently upon his and looked at his wrist-watch. 

“I shall beat you to it,” said Dunbar squeez¬ 
ing her hand. “I shall write to her myself.” 

“Oh do, Joey, then I won’t have to,” she 
laughed, rising. The young men rose and stood 
about her. She loved it all, the gay place, their 
young homage. One could see how she loved 
it. “I’m dining with an old friend up near the 
Etoile. She really paints. I dine with her 
every Sunday night. I came early to have a 
walk. I’m awfully glad that I did.” She gave 
them separate and collective gratitude out of 
her sweet eyes and beringed little old hands. 


98 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“We’re all glad/’ said Elsie, melting all at 
once. 

“Are you, my dear? Then perhaps we’ll 
meet again. And do, do, for your own sake, 
collect old pearls!” She half closed her eyes 
and considered Elsie as if she were painting 
her. “Long, very long, old Spanish earrings, 
you know, and big crusted rings. You’d be 
lovely!” Then again to Dunbar. “I’ll write 
your mother, perhaps, Joey. Good-bye, my 
dears—” 

They sat again, watching her go—Sarah 
Hubb—Sally Hope, little and oldish, and all 
sweet and brave. The slanting sun caught 
upon the edges of her henna-dyed much waved 
hair, upon the flying points of her sash-ends and 
her lemon and mole coloured batiks. 

“She made me feel like thirty cents,” said 
Elsie, turning her solitaires out again and smil¬ 
ing at them. 

“You don’t look it, darling,” chuckled Dun¬ 
bar, “and bless you, you are pure gold I” 

“Come, come, Dunbar,” said Nelson acidly, 
“where are your manners. Mrs. Raymond is 
only interested in becoming pure platinum.” 

Elsie gave him a flash of temper. “Rub it 


BATIK 


99 


in,” she murmured and turned stubbornly to 
her powder and lip-stick. 

Nelson smoked. Dunbar settled with the 
waiter. Elsie, her powder puff in one hand, her 
little mirror in the other, paused and looked 
them over. “Call a taxi—Joey!” she mocked 
him, imitating Miss Hope. “I must go to my 
hotel and eat, drink and be merry all alone, for 
tomorrow I am going out to see Bill Raymond, 
and I shall probably die! You can drink me 
a silent toast,” she went on with her powdering, 
“while you are being merry with Chatham and 
his street-rags. Why didn’t you ask your Miss 
Hope to come and have dinner with you, Joey? 
You’d never think of asking her , would you?” 

Nelson watched Elsie. Dunbar and Sey¬ 
mour exchanged a shocked glance. An awaken¬ 
ing glance. “Miss Hope’s awfully nice,” said 
Dunbar, talking fast. “We’ll have her to dine 
some night next week, if you will, Elsie?” 

“You dining alone, too?” Elsie asked Nel¬ 
son, ignoring the others. 

“I?—Oh, I don’t know. Alone—if at all. 
Why?” 

Elsie laughed. “I just wondered. I like to 
guess how you three act at your Sunday dinners, 


100 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


when I am not there. It’s fun, guessing. I can 
see Jo, like a shot.” She glanced at Seymour 
and said nothing. “But, you—” she laughed 
again at Nelson, “are sort of hard to guess.” 

“Why—thanks,” murmured Nelson. 

“Don’t speak of it!” said Elsie comically. 

Then in their taxi, they rolled away, leaving 
Nelson, hat in hand, looking idly after them. 
He had said he wanted to walk. Dunbar and 
Seymour were taking Elsie down to her hotel. 
She refused absolutely to come with them to 
dine. “That’s that, and that is over,” she told 
them. Dunbar leaned against her carelessly, 
and Seymour sat before her. “Oh,” she said 
impatiently, her rings flashing as she beat the 
air, “do for heaven’s sake sit over, both of you, 
and let me be. I feel like screaming!” 

They laughed, pretended terror of her, 
lighted their cigarettes, and let her be. They 
chatted quite contentedly of people she had 
never heard of. She thought of Nelson and 
his fine-edged insolence. She visioned Bill. 
She felt tears swelling in her throat. She 
thought of the frumpy Miss Hope and 
her old junky rings. They hadn’t really 
cost anything, comparatively. She stared 


BATIK 


101 


miserably at her solitares—her pure, price¬ 
less, white diamonds. And now, the people 
she liked all sat around having fits about 
colour! She stared at her day’s collection of 
blunders, her own so easily stirred irritation. 
None of these things, she told herself with her 
common sense, amounted to a “hill of beans.” 
But—they did! They simply broke her heart. 
These blunders and little things I And she did 
so like playing round with Dunbar and Sey¬ 
mour. And Nelson too. But what did she 
really matter to them? To them she was “fair 
game,” with all her diamonds, and clothes, and 
hicky blunders. They liked to go about with 
her because people stared at her, because they 
could say what they pleased to her, could talk 
over her head if they felt like it. She, told 
herself that she was a fool to care; that it 
wasn’t “good enough.” But she did care. She 
cared so much that she was all nerves and 
ready to cry about it. She sat looking away 
from them, but wishing they’d notice her, un¬ 
derstand her. They were talking about English 
politics. She thought of Nelson. Then of Cos- 
grieve. She liked Cosgrieve more than the 
others, except Nelson. Thinking of Cosgrieve 


t 

102 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

made her realize, with a leap of her warm 
heart, her approaching tomorrow, and Bill. 
Bill Raymond. And thinking of Bill she forgot 
the others, mercy giving her memory precious 
little every-day things that had not been awk¬ 
ward to think of. Little things and their infi¬ 
nite consolations. But they were memories, and 
they would never happen again. She got thank¬ 
fully away from the two young men, into the 
hotel, the lift, her room. She locked her door. 
Then, later, she unlocked it, and ordered her 
dinner in her room. 


VII 

TURQUOISES OF TEXAS 

“Hello —who is it?” said Elsie, at her bed¬ 
room telephone. She was kneeling in bed, hold¬ 
ing the phone. 

“Oh—? Fine, thanks.” 

“Yes. Lovely! The others are coming of 
course.” 

“No?—really?” 

“Sure, I’ll be ready! Goodbye!” 

She put the phone back on the table and sat 
in the middle of her luxurious bed, a queer look, 
half sick and half triumphant, upon her face. 
Nelson had asked her to dine, alone. He’d 
said, in so many words, that he wanted her all 
to himself for once. She liked his wanting her 
to himself but she did not like herself for liking 
it. Nelson behaved like an animal trainer with 
103 


104 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


her. He lashed her with his sarcasm, made 
fun of her, made her feel awkward and green, 
made fun of her clothes, and her diamonds and 
turquoises. Why, why shouldn’t she like tur¬ 
quoises? Lovely sky blue—She looked out at 
the sky and thought of her turquoises. They 
weren't quite the same sort of blue? But may¬ 
be he was just—the thought evaded her. 

She got out of bed, the pink satin eiderdown 
following her, trailing after her crushed pink 
crepe de chine and ribbons. She laughed softly, 
liking all the warm softness of her things, her¬ 
self, her bed. She sat a moment, one foot upon 
the other, both posed upon her pink satin mules. 
Bill was her persistent vision, and he had his 
enormous way of shutting out all the rest of the 
light. Cosgrieve had again put off their going 
down to see Bill, and he had invited Jo Dunbar 
to go with them. Cosgrieve had such a funny 
way of liking to be alone with her in a restaur¬ 
ant, or anywhere in a crowd, but not really 
alone. He seemed embarrassed, afraid of 
something, his shadow or hers, when chance 
threw them really alone together. She laughed 
to think of it. “Men!” she yawned, and stood 
and stretched herself, her hands rubbing her 


TURQUOISES OF TEXAS 10S 


lazy arms to life. Then with a laugh at the 
sunshine she said another word—“Geese I” 
She went to her dressing-table. She shook her 
braids loose, the light fairly leaping over her 
blond, glossy hair. The table with its triple 
glasses stood against a window that let the light 
of the high skies in upon her. She looked and 
looked at herself. The air from an open win¬ 
dow moved over her deliciously. She stood 
close to the curtains and looked out, through 
the lace, over her mirror, at the Place de la 
Concorde, with its beautiful motor-cars moving 
every way, carrying men to their business, wom¬ 
en to their shopping. Nelson had told her to 
profit while there in those windows; “to con¬ 
sider the roof-line across the river before her, 
as she had been taught to consider the lilies, and 
not to think at all of Lanvin or of Poiret.” 
She’d “considered,” and she’d laughed to think 
“what Papa’d think” of all the little funny 
chimney-pots. Of course Papa’d like the Cham¬ 
ber of Deputies, and the trees; but Nelson had 
said “roofs,” and he usually meant what he 
said. She yawned again. What to do with 
her day? In the evening there was Nelson— 
they were to go to the Rotonde to dine—the 


106 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


student’s haunt. She felt a little afraid of that 
—didn’t know just what to wear. Alone with 
Nelson? It was rank treason to Seymour and 
Jo Dunbar. But, they’d not really care. She 
wondered what they did, each and everyone of 
them, really care about? And why had Nelson 
laughed at her for coming to this hotel ? When 
he’d asked her where she was stopping, he’d 
asked her “Why?” with that queer smile he 
had, his whole face like a shining knife. She’d 
told him that she ‘guessed if it was good 
enough for Pershing, and Mary and Doug,’ 
that it would do for her!” Brr-r-r-r-r-r-r-. The 
telephone again! 

“Yes, hello—Oh, how nicer 

“Love to. One o’clock?” 

“Yes—I promise!” 

“Thanks—yes—Goodbye!” 

Again she stood smiling, the odd sick look 
again giving the lie to her smile. Cosgrieve, 
this time! She was to lunch with him, alone! 
She wondered about Cosgrieve. She could have 
asked Dunbar about him. But she always for¬ 
got to, or put it off. “No news is good news.” 
She smiled, accusing herself. He seemed 
married. Thinking that made her won- 


TURQUOISES OF TEXAS 107 

der if she “seemed married.” Perhaps his 
mother, maybe sisters, were living out there. 
Perhaps his wife was there. She’d find out 
when she went down to see Bill. 

It was only a quarter to ten. She yawned 
and looked at her bed again. She got her book, 
—Old Court Life in France. She’d actually 
cried over the story of Louise de la Valliere. 
A prig, too! It was a funny idea, coming from 
her little old home town all the way to Paris, 
and then spending precious time crying over the 
life of a weak-kneed prig, and the rest of the 
time grouching because she was not meeting 
mothers and sisters, and cousins and aunts! 
She asked herself what on earth was the matter 
with her? She was having a great time. “A 
great time!” But, was she? She stood, splen¬ 
did in the golden morning light, staring at the 
bunch of orchids that Cosgrieve had sent to her 
the day before. And that, with irony, flashed 
her mind back to Bill and his botany. Bill, and 
his love of the very weeds! Cosgrieve had 
probably ordered the orchids by ’phone, and his 
secretary would pay the bill. To-day, he’d for¬ 
gotten probably that he’d sent them. 

She slipped back into her bed. She lay flat, 


108 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


her thoughts drifting about, her finger in her 
book to keep the place. She’d ask Nelson what 
he thought about the poor little prig, de Val- 
liere. It would show that she was reading; 
would give her something to talk about, alone 
with him. She sat up brusquely, peering at her¬ 
self in the mirror of her big wardrobe, and she 
flushed scarlet, and again she called herself “a 
fool.” That made her feel better, for she’d 
more than half meant it. Down in the soft 
pillows again she stared at the dazzling light, 
and her thoughts played with her dreams. Even 
from her unsatisfactory vantage so far, she’d 
glimpsed the beautiful Paris game of life. She 
wanted to play too. She had the money, the 
looks. Elsie knew what she looked like, and she 
was beginning to suspect that she might look 
better. If she just knew how! She grew stub¬ 
born, thinking of Miss Hope’s old rings, and 
what she’d said of her, in pearls. Old pearls, 
not new ones, all matched, but old pearls and 
all colors. And she made up her mind, there 
in bed, the room alive with morning sunshine, 
to play the game and to play it high. She’d do 
it even if she had to wear cracked and yellowed 
old Spanish pearls. And she wondered, all at 


TURQUOISES OF TEXAS 109 


once, sharp as a revelation, what Miss Hope 
would say about her turquoises! Silly as it all 
was, the big, soft, golden, rich young thing lay 
there in her deep silky bed crying about the 
silliness, and lonesome, and wanting friends— 
mothers and sisters, and just “good times.” 
And, she cried it out for the time, then she 
drifted to sleep again; slept like a big handsome 
baby till after eleven o’clock. 

She dressed then, for her lunch with Cos- 
grieve; dressed in a new, odd flowered thing 
from Poiret. She was so gorgeous that she 
frightened herself. She looked critically at her¬ 
self in her full-length mirror, her hand with its 
big new solitaires holding her gold and tur¬ 
quoise-mounted bag and vanity-things. She got 
an odd shock. The diamonds were all right. 
She liked them, and she knew that she did, but 
the turquoises didn’t go with the dress. They 
looked insipid. “Oh—darn!” she said, and 
holding her bag tight and her head high, she 
went to meet Cosgrieve. 

At the end of their luncheon, her color in no 
need of rouge, she looked at Cosgrieve bravely, 
gaily. “I’ll tell you what you may do for me, 
as you’re so anxious!” 


110 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“Do tell me 1” he bent across their little table 
toward her. 

She took her time, and rouged her mouth 
before answering him. “Come with me to a 
shop and help me buy half a dozen bags and 
things to carry with these crazy Paris togs?” 

Cosgrieve laughed softly, his fine hand play¬ 
ing with the gold and turquoise trinkets. “You 
dear child, I shall love to,” he told her. 

He had spoken so gently and sympathetically 
that she recoiled from him, vaguely troubled, 
and on her guard. But, as she sat thinking, 
her rouged mouth grew firmer. Suddenly she 
looked at Cosgrieve. “Where on earth do tur¬ 
quoises come from, anyway?” she asked him. 

Cosgrieve took up the bag and looked more 
closely. “Sometimes from Persia—the Orient. 
These, I should think, must have come from 
Texas.” 

“Oh?” said Elsie queerly. 

For a long moment they sat peering at one- 
another across the expensive debris of their 
luncheon table, peering with a mixture of con¬ 
fession and interest, holding fast to their sur¬ 
faces with their oddly) assorted smiles. So do 
the little nothings serve their turns. 


TURQUOISES OF TEXAS 111 


Cosgrieve looked gaily forward to a maze 
of shops with Elsie as opportunity, as a hunter 
looks ahead to a silent, leafy forest. 

Elsie laughed oddly. She slipped her little 
mirror back into its place. “I’ve heard,” she 
said, “that if a woman wants to know a man, 
she just has to take him shopping with her. 
Something in it maybe. Not,” she gave him a 
glance—the ray of sunlight in the hunter’s 
forest— “that you need to think you’ll be able 
to make me buy anything I don’t like—” 


VIII 

EVENING ON THE LEFT BANK 

Elsie was sitting at her dressing-table touch¬ 
ing her hair into place under a new, small black 
and silver hat that Cosgrieve had “discovered” 
for her, when Nelson phoned again. His voice 
was very gay. He asked her to taxi over and 
meet him at the Rotonde. “You see,” he gaily 
argued it, “I am here already. If I were to 
leave the place and come over for you, we’d 
neither of us be here!” 

Elsie didn’t like it. She felt more timid of 
that sort of environment than any other. 
“You’ll be there waiting?” she’d faltered a 
little. And for answer a gay laugh had struck 
her ear. “I’ll be easy to find,” he’d assured 
her. 

She got out of her taxi and stood scanning 
112 


THE LEFT BANK 


113 


the crowded terrace. There was no sign of 
Nelson. The place was packed with a mass of 
creatures with extraordinary faces, and nearly 
all extremely young. When there was an older 
face, it looked resigned or sheepish. When it 
looked something else, it was revolting. Elsie 
thought of walking awhile and coming back, 
then she shook herself for her timidity. She 
moved toward a chair in the throng, met peer¬ 
ing eyes everywhere, revolted. She stood aside, 
not knowing what to do, looking, looking. 
There were short-haired girls, behaving fear¬ 
lessly, their hats on top of their walking-sticks, 
-looking like the presence of another sort of 
girl beside them. There were classical girls 
with abundant hair all waved, and gestures out 
of National Theatres. There were girls who 
looked clever, were plain and tired, and shabby, 
and queer, who sat alone and drank alone, faces 
worn, their gaze upon the other side of the 
street. Faces, faces, everywhere; Swedish 
blondes with pinched red noses; raven-wing 
black hair under Spanish hats, turbans out of 
the East; black faces, white faces, none of them 
at peace, or even dreaming of peace. Faces they 
were that hovered above their creatures as 


114 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


clock-faces hover above their pendulums, all of 
them, even when love-making, looking for 
something diverting to come by, in the street. 
Faces that talked, talked, talked, like clocks, 
but of other things than the portentous ticking 
by of time. Elsie did not get the lightness of 
it, it frightened her. IPs breath sickened her. 
It seemed to her that they’d got themselves 
uncomfortably wedged in there just to find their 
smiles again over her awkwardness. They, 
with thin eyes, made the plump, rich and gor¬ 
geous Elsie feel all hands and feet. She was 
sure she wasn’t over-dressed in her black and 
blue crepe and her little silvery hat. Jo Dun¬ 
bar had once called her, “You expensive-look¬ 
ing thing!” and now she felt it. “Oh where is 
he?” her mind complained. “He shouldn’t 
have left me to such a rabble, alone!” Embar¬ 
rassed and warm, she worked her way to a 
chair just inside the door at the foot of a flight 
of stai/s. Up and down the stairs, and in and 
out of the rooms, ran a river of creatures; more 
clock-faced creatures. Up and down, and in 
and out of the rooms, then back again. She 
seemed, do as she would about it, to be in every¬ 
body’s way. A negro, in quite good-looking 


THE LEFT BANK 


115 


grey flannels, took a chair beside hers and 
frankly appreciated her. She was about to 
leave when Nelson, cool, and gay, and very 
much at home, came running down the stairs. 
“Dear girl, why didn’t you come up—?” he 
greeted her. 

“I wasn’t born with a plan of this horrid 
place on my brain, was I? How could I know 
that the barn had a loft?” She was red and 
cross. 

Nelson patted her arm soothingly. 

Elsie looked down at his hand. 

He smoked a moment then looked her 
straight in the eyes. “I was playing chess and 
for one moment forgot the time,” he told her, 
his eyes laughing. “Do you really want to 
fight about it? Because,” he became faintly in¬ 
solent, “I don’t like fighting in a place like this. 
We can take a taxi over to my studio, you 
know? The fact that we care so little about 
it might make a fight rather amusing?” 

Elsie flushed, then laughed. “If you want 
to put it that way, we’ll stay right here. It 
won’t kill me, I suppose, to be with you, and 
I want to see what the funny show really is.” 

Nelson led the way to the upstairs cafe where 


116 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


a young and grainy-skinned American college 
boy in a flat-topped round felt hat and spec¬ 
tacles, was melting Chopin out of the tin-pan 
piano to the disgust of a very modern young 
and bobbed American girl. She sat at a table 
close to the piano, her little round, black hat 
beside her glass of vermouth, her small, indig¬ 
nant, suffering self clad in a slip of grey and 
yellow gingham. “Cut it out, old hat,” Elsie 
heard her say to the boy. “Come and talk 
something else with me, boy, and I’ll tell you 
where not to take music lessons. That soft- 
eyed stuff is dead, and you are behaving worse 
than dead.” 

Around the room, like islands, sat men, here 
and there a woman, her hat off, playing chess 
with the men. Two Chinamen, their soft faces 
like blossoms, incongruous straw hats on, sat 
talking softly together. A negress in a green 
crepe turban, her large-veined feet crammed in¬ 
to fancy slippers, gold hoops in her ears, sat 
close to a young Frenchman, both vapid in their 
love-making coma. There were girls, girls, 
girls, exceedingly young girls in childish dresses, 
walking up and down the place. In a corner 
near the dignity of the chess islands, sat an 


THE LEFT BANK 


117 


American woman, over-strong in her early thir¬ 
ties. She’d wrapped her abundance in a hot¬ 
house aura of seeming convictions. Her good 
face was very much made up. The paint seemed 
to hover, a masque, just before her. A masque 
that did not want to settle upon its victim. A 
masque with a conscience. It was a face that 
had been destined to be washed, not painted. 
Under her large ringed hands—a seal ring, a 
wedding-ring and two or three heavy lapus 
lazuli modern rings, lay a pile of magazines. 
They were American weeklies of opinion and 
thought. Nelson dubbed them “The Weakies.” 
And there faced her a rim of owl-faced young 
men, who listened, while her hands turned the 
pages, and her masque held forth. 

“Goodnight,” gasped Elsie, fixing her gaze 
upon her country woman, “is she their— 
Aunt?” 

“Oh no, my dear Elsie, she isn’t even as 
much as an aunt to them. Not that it matters, 
the poor dear. She’s really very touching, I 
think. She’s having such a bad time with her¬ 
self. The very sight of you makes her look 
hungry. You, with a grown up man I” he 
laughed. 


118 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


‘‘Touching?” Elsie wondered over him. 
“She ought to be ashamed of herself. Cradle- 
snatcher!” 

They were sitting near enough to the group 
to catch its drift. “Better not drink but one 
of those, old dear,” they heard a childfaced 
owl advise her. 

And “Old dear” considered the young owl 
and his advice. “If you mean I won’t sleep? 
Who’s got time to waste in sleeping. Sleeping 
is the crime of crimes!” 

Elsie noticed the blue scoops about her eyes 
and the lines about her painted mouth. “I 
guess everybody’s crazy,” she sighed. 

Nelson turned and looked Elsie over critic¬ 
ally, “Not quite,” he smiled. “You do look 
fresh and sweet.” Then he murmured, “I 
thought you would, over here. And you are 
learning to buy hats. That one’s lovely.” 

Elsie flushed, but let it go at that. It was no 
concern of his that Cosgrieve had picked it out 
for her. 

Just beyond the piano by a window was a 
group of four women, three Americans and 
an English woman. One of them was doing 
all the talking; was telling the others something 


THE LEFT BANK 


119 


tremendously funny. They didn’t even notice 
Elsie, were too thoroughly enjoying themselves. 

“They are painters—fashions or wood¬ 
blocks, or something of the sort,” said Nelson. 

The one who talked was ample and deep¬ 
breasted, her hair was dyed red, she wore much 
jewellery, amber and yellow and silver things. 
She was telling the others something, and her¬ 
self laughing enormously. Her teeth and the 
whites of her eyes looked yellowish, all but 
ugly, because of the blue-pink of her make¬ 
up, but someway she was not ugly at all, but 
warm and alluring. 

“Anyway they don’t look as if it was all 
about a funeral,” said Elsie desperately. 

“She’s awfully clever,” smiled Nelson. 
“That just disarms all the henna, doesn’t it? I 
mean because, really, she’s so good. Just a ter¬ 
ror I” he laughed. “Inquisitive, and giddy- 
good.” He laughed again, softly. “Dollars 
to doughnuts, Elsie, if you hear what’s she’s 
telling that makes them laugh so, you’d make 
me take you back to your expensive, but highly 
respectable hotel.” 

“You know her?” 


120 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“Lord no,” said Nelson. “I’d not—dare!” 
And his laugh made Elsie blush. 

“I like her,” Elsie couldn’t let it be. 

“And that, dear child, is just to the point. 
Look now! she’s making up to go. Look Elsie, 
with all your eyes, at the way she’s putting it 
on. Bold and bad strokes! She’s not deceit¬ 
ful about her paint, the way you are. There’s 
none of the airless classical about her!” 

“Oh my—goodness!” breathed Elsie, as a 
wild-eyed, drug-mushed face under a shabby 
picture hat came by, vague and bodiless as a 
shadow, her bleary eyes searching, searching. 

“A mad American poetess,” said Nelson 
softly. “Something crossed over from Green¬ 
wich Village, and considerably more infamous 
than famous. Don’t look at her,” he ^warned, 
“or she’ll stop and talk. She’s —hell ” he mur¬ 
mured. “That’s not blasphemy, but fact. A 
creature of hell, crept back to earth, sent per¬ 
haps, by old Satan, to gather news of this little 
place!” 

“Oh dear ” said Elsie, comically in earnest. 
“I don’t like it here!” 

“We’ll go and have dinner,” chuckled Nek 


THE LEFT BANK 121 

son. “The restaurant’s too expensive for poets 
and drug-tortured ghosts.” 

Nelson had reserved their table at one end 
of the restaurant by a window, green and leafy 
outside, the late daylight-saving sun falling 
softly upon the linen and glass. Elsie sat facing 
the room. Nelson glanced over his shoulder to 
see who was there. “See that chap over there 
in grey, with a batik “hanky?” The one with 
the pretty little blue eyes, in the big, blue hat? 
What do you guess he is?” 

Elsie looked at the fair gosling-like head 
and neck of the young Frenchman. She sighed, 
then laughed a little. “He doesn’t look like 
much to me,” she confessed. 

“Right as rain,” smiled Nelson. “It’s one on 
the Americans who flock here to dine, to have 
a look at genius! He’s the chauffeur of a man 
I know!” 

“But the girl’s—sweet, and sort of artistic- 
looking, isn’t she?” Elsie was comically 
puzzled. 

“After all, chauffeurs are better paid than 
artists,” commented Nelson. “Why not? Why 
shouldn’t he be here?” 


122 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“But,” said Elsie floundering and quite pink, 
“Doesn’t the girl care about a good time?” 

“Chauffeurs can give girls better times per¬ 
haps, than artists. Artists only care to give 
themselves a good time, and a little for vanity 
about how the girl looks.” Then Nelson gave 
his attention to Elsie, to the dinner, her wine, 
her comfort. “Now you’ve had enough of 
side-shows. Look only at me,” he commanded 
her gaily. And delightfully, he bent to her, 
chatted, charmed her, and the dinner was at 
its coffee, and Elsie fairly enchanted, when a 
man came up to their table. “Oh—hello Comp¬ 
ton!” said Nelson, cordially rising. 

Compton was a wasted, pale, sweet-faced 
fugitive-looking man. He was middle-aged, 
walked like a friendly ghost through the pink, 
feeding, clamoring young, and held out a deli¬ 
cate hand to Nelson. Nelson got him a chair, 
presented him to Elsie. And Elsie liked him at 
once, and gave him her hand simply and 
warmly. This was no pretending little freak 
ready to prove his strength by insulting her, 
or putting her in the wrong. This was a friend¬ 
ly human-being, and her eyes greeted him in¬ 
stinctively. He wore a loose black tie, shabby 


THE LEFT BANK 


123 


tweeds, and a very old, many-times-cleaned 
wide-rimmed Panama hat. His hands were 
small and thin, and told of their fifty-some 
winters. His shoes were orderly, but cracked 
and as polished as his grey hair was brushed. 

“You must have coffee with us, Compton,” 
said Nelson. “Shall we have it here by the 
window, with Mrs. Raymond all to ourselves, 
or shall we be generous and take her down to 
purgatory and the terrace?” 

For answer, Compton settled himself in his 
chair. “You’d be very nice to paint,” he told 
Elsie. “There where you are, against the wall, 
in the twilight,” his voice fell off like a casually 
sketched line. He faced Nelson, the light of 
combat flaring suddenly in his eyes. “It’s high 
time for a great portrait painter, eh? It’s a 
dead art. Women won’t have ’em now, and no 
wonder, in an age that likes to paint ’em so 
like rotten cheese that the pictures smell!” 

“Oh!” gasped Elsie, shocked. 

“What’s the use after all, of talking about 
painters and painting. Painting is a dead art. 
I’m dead. We’re all dead; we old fellows who 
used to be painters.” 

“But,” Nelson protested, “it is less than 


124 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


twenty-four hours since I heard you say, Comp¬ 
ton, that there’s nothing else on earth, in heav¬ 
en or in hell, worth talking about!” 

“I was drunk. Very drunk,” Compton re¬ 
minded him gently, reproachfully. 

Nelson laughed with him, gay over memories 
they’d no thought of telling Elsie. 

“I’m perfectly certain Mrs. Raymond 
doesn’t care about painting. She is much too 
beautiful to be bothered about an art. A mere 
art.” He looked at her as if she were a piece 
of still-life, a bibelot. “What in the world do 
you put that red stuff on your mouth for, and 
paint your lovely little nose till it looks like a 
fox-terrier’s muzzle, and all out of values?” he 
asked her, peering wistfully into her eyes. “I 
ask you, Nelson, doesn’t it beat the Dutch?” 

“Maybe,” she said, “if you’ll all stop making 
such a fuss about it, we’d stop making up?” She 
felt a little cross, injured. 

“That’s probably it,” grinned Compton. 
“Blame the men! Well, well,” he lapsed into 
an absent smile, “the old game’s changed. 
When I was a kid over here, a student, even our 
play had something to do with work. There 
was a band of us, and we were all on fire,— 


THE LEFT BANK 


125 


just blazin’!—to any little arty breeze,—with 
ambition. There was half a dozen of us, and 
sure as night came we went round to the studio 
of two girls we knew. They ‘belonged’, bless 
’em. You think we just sat around talkin’ wise, 
like all this damned “settle-down of doves” you 
see now? Not much! The girls had a big 
studio, and we rigged up a model stand like 
a stage, and we got up poses with artificial 
light, and we worked. And at ten-forty-five 
one of us shook down the stove for the night, 
and at eleven we “filed.” That was play, if you 
like. Now they sit round and wait till they 
feel like work. And they don’t know a damn 
thing. School? Not on your life! They read 
Clive Bell and ; talk new clap-trap. Poor fish! 
Well,” he grinned, “who cares? They’ll wake 
up dead one mornin’. Be a pretty sight for 
the milkman, eh?—to come by and find all that 
terrace down there, sittin’ still, dead.” He gave 
a sigh and smoked absently a while. 

“You know,” he peered at Nelson, “I’m all 
shot up tonight. I’m blue—!” He paused a 
moment gravely. “I’ve been to old Greyson’s 
funeral today. A nice thing to have to do, 
after last night? A very decent chap, Mrs. 


126 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

Raymond, and he painted well enough. Cath¬ 
olic, he was. They call it a mass, they had for 
him. At noon, at the little church down the 
street. Poor old Greyson! He was a wise guy 
to have been a Catholic. They gave him 
his hour of velvet and honours all right. 
Little old Greyson with that screetchy 
laugh of his, tucked in there under all 
the black velvet silver and flowers. Silver, 
eh? Great! Greyson knew the painting game 
was up. But, funny thing about it—we’ve 
somehow got to keep on at it—us old chaps. 
He did, till he died. We can’t stop. We’ve 
wound ourselves up so damned sincerely, you 
know. It’s quite pathetic. It’s tragic, eh? 
Greyson painted quite little pictures, no good 
at all; but he had a peach of a funeral! I 
think I’ll be a Catholic, and save my face, too. 
Dear old Greyson. He’d have screetched a 
laugh at us from under his canopy, if he hadn’t 
been—so dead,” he ended softly. 

“What did he die of?” asked Elsie absently. 

Compton looked at her as if faintly shocked, 
then at the trees and dusk outside, then back 
at Elsie. He rather anxiously shifted. “Oh, I 
don’t know. Old age maybe. Just died—. 


THE LEFT BANK 


127 


He’s been over here, like the rest of us, since 
1900. The vintage is becoming rare. We all 
got together today, and toddled over to his 
funeral. God, how we hated goin’ I It was 
ours, too. And we knew it. It was awful, 
looking at one another, all sallow, and greenish, 
and grey-headed, and bald! We sat, side by 
side, and listened to the sing-song. When it 
was over, all the mummery, we found we could 
still walk. We had to walk, damn it!—right 
outside again, like live men, into the sunlight. 
Some of us had to hurry. You can get across 
a falling bridge on the run, you know. We’d 
models engaged for the afternoon, and these 
days models cost money. Live models. All 
these young things around here who grin at us, 
make us talk to hear us, and call us “old hats,” 
they don’t have models. Don’t believe in ’em. 
Not for painting. In a little while they’ll be 
toddling to somebody’s funeral and with the 
same-lookin’ heads—” He glanced at his 
watch. “I must go along now. I’m playing 
bridge with three other old things, over at the 
Dome, and they’ll curse me if I’m late. Good¬ 
night, Mrs. Raymond. Goodnight, Nelson!” 
and smiling delightfully, he took himself busily 


128 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


off, his old Panama hat held against his breast 
in his fine small oldish hand. 

“Is he a good painter?” asked Elsie, watch¬ 
ing him go. 

“I believe he hardly paints at all, any more,” 
said Nelson. “He has just enough to live on. 
He goes chatting about, from one excuse to 
another.” 

Elsie had had a good deal of wine, and the 
night was very warm. “You,” she laughed, 
looking fully at Nelson, “are so funny—in this 
mess. Do you really like it?” 

“So are you,” said Nelson, “Funny in this 
mess.” 

“Oh,—me,” she chuckled. ‘I could play this 
game if I wanted to. It’s—too easy, eh ?” 

“It pretty often turns out too badly,” said 
Nelson. Then right into her eyes, he de¬ 
manded, “Elsie why don’t you quit fooling and 
go to school?” 

“Maybe—I will,” she said, wishing he’d let 
her be. She did wish he’d just like her, for 
once, just as she was. 

“Maybe,” he echoed her cynically. “You 
need—school, just as much as painters need it.” 


THE LEFT BANK 129 

“You mean,” she flared, “so that I’ll learn to 
say perhaps instead of maybe, eh?” 

“I do. And ever so much more,” he stuck 
to it. “For your own sake,” he temporized, 
smiling. 

“I’d cut you out and go straight home,” she 
told him, “except that you’d not care a darn.” 
Her voice quivered, and her eyes gave him 
childish threatenings. She tried not to care. 
Why wouldn’t he let her be, not spoil every¬ 
thing. 

“I’d care something quite different from a 
darn,” said Nelson. “You are a magnificent 
young animal. That’s what everybody is, an 
animal; but less magnificent. Elsie, do wake 
up. You make your sensation so easily! Why 
don’t you go to work and learn how to hold it? 
Garden and trim your abundance? You could 
be superb,” he told her. “I have an idea for 
you. May I tell it to you one day soon? Not 
tonight. I want to be quite sure. Will you— 
would you let me help you?” 

She played with her glass. Her head was 
turning a little, and she felt absurdly like tears. 
“I know what a nut I am,” she said. “I’m 


130 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


always wrong. Every time. To get by, I have 
to be still, and I love to talk. It’s just awful.” 

“Come, let’s get out of herel” For a light 
instant he laid his hand upon hers. He paid, 
led the way out, down the stairs again, where 
a new crowd was swarming, or new-looking, 
and sleeked down for the evening. 

Elsie did not care in the least for the clock- 
faces this time, and, oddly, they paid no atten¬ 
tion to her. She thought dizzily that she felt 
a good deal older than when she’d arrived. All 
that, in three hours’ time! While Nelson got 
a taxi, she took restoring breaths of the eve¬ 
ning air. She felt bruised, and red, and smoky, 
but quite absurdly happy. She’d leave things 
to Nelson. He must really like her, to bother 
so much about her, wanting to help her. The 
evening was before them. At least, another 
three hours. Maybe more. “Perhaps more,” 
she dizzily corrected her dizzy thoughts. She 
didn’t care what he chose to do with it, their 
evening. She wouldn’t have trusted Jo Dun¬ 
bar, or even Seymour. She’d have told them 
what she wanted to do. Cosgrieve wouldn’t 
have given her the chance to trust him. Cos¬ 
grieve didn’t trust himself. But Nelson had 


THE LEFT BANK 


131 


been kind—really sweet to her tonight. They’d 
go to a cafe maybe out under the trees—maybe 
to his studio—Her heart gave a reckless leap 
at the thought. It didn’t take long to have 
little thoughts. Between the heady wine, the 
warm night, the strangeness of creatures, she 
felt bewildered, deliciously melted. 

Nelson put her inside the taxi. He spoke to 
the chauffeur then closed the door. His hat 
off, his slim hand through the door, he said, 
“I was in earnest, you know, about your going 
to school, Elsie, and I shall bully you into do¬ 
ing it, if I may?” He was as polite and cool 
as if he had just met her after a week of ab¬ 
sence. “I have a beautiful idea for you. So 
beautiful that I must look at it for a while, and 
you with it, before I tell you. You know, it 
doesn’t do, even for ideas, to be too beautiful. 
I’ll call you up, or see you, no doubt, with the 
others. Goodnight! Awfully sweet of you to 
have come.” And he retreated. He stood 
there, his hat in his hand; left her, alone, actu¬ 
ally to go home alone, in her taxi, gasping, out¬ 
raged, at nine o’clock in the evening! 


IX 

DIFFERENT 

“Hello, Seymour!” Dunbar rose from a 
table he was holding in a small restaurant not 
far from the American Bank palaces of the 
Place Vendome; a modest restaurant where 
economical lunches helped to balance dinners 
elsewhere that were often otherwise. In a 
moment they were considering the menu. “Pm 
all in,” Dunbar laughed confessingly, after 
they’d ordered. 

“You got in at three,” commented Seymour 
with a glance not all sympathy. 

“I dined out with our Elsie, and she wouldn’t 
go home. She all but talked me to death. You 
know, Seymour, the kiddo is very much mixed 
up.” 

Seymour grinned. “I know. You may not 
132 


DIFFERENT 


133 


realize that it was beginning to be dawn the 
night before, when for the same good reason, 
I came softly in, shoes in hand I Nelson com¬ 
ing to lunch?’’ 

“Do’ no,” said Dunbar, deep in the menu. 

“Nelson’s going to burn out if he keeps it 
up. Since he quit me, without notice, the other 
day, and began living over in his “work-shop” 
as he calls it, I’ve hardly seen him. But he 
looks white and tired.” 

“Well, I’m glad he quit you, old man,” said 
Dunbar, “since I’ve got his bunk. It’s pretty 
smooth, our little flat. As for Nelson, he looks 
like the dickens.” 

“It’s the novel. Funny game, he’s playing. 
I’ve been to his place. Books and a table and 
two chairs, and a sort of bed-room up in a 
balcony. He can’t stay there when it gets cold, 
and I’ve told him so.” 

“Sure there isn’t a girl?” suggested Dunbar, 
suppressing a yawn. 

“Can’t be sure,” said Seymour. “But she cov¬ 
ers her tracks if there is one. No, Dunbar, I 
believe Nel’s just throwing all there is of him 
into his novel.” 

“Read it?” 


134 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“Lord no,” smiled Seymour. “He fairly 
sits on it, like a wary hen on her eggs, when I’m 
there. I hope it goes, but he says it won’t.” 

“Then why the devil—?” Dunbar wondered. 

“I asked him why. More fool I! He 
laughed in that uncanny way of his and began 
talking American politics. There he is now! 
Hi, Nel’! Come over here with us. Sure 
there’s room! You oyster, where’ve you been 
feeding for the last week?” 

Nelson thought it over, then he hung up his 
hat and joined them. “Eating? Why, in an 
antique shop in the rue des Saints Peres. I’ve 
bought a beautiful table. I’m getting soft 
again. Reverting to my anti-war type, buying 
beautiful furniture.” 

“Eating there?” Dunbar stared at him. 

“Why, not exactly,” said Nelson. “It was 
the table that did the eating.” Then he 
dropped the subject, gave them a bit of business 
news he’d picked up at the bank. And, on that 
safe track, they chatted through to their coffee; 
the exchange, the Ruhr, American oil and 
democracy, British labor, Turkish women, Brit¬ 
ish, Russian princesses, and the newest things 
in tea-rooms. 


DIFFERENT 135 

“How is H. R. H. Gold Elsie?” Nelson 
asked them. 

They grinned. “Very seedy,” said Dunbar. 
“Off her feed,” said Seymour. 

“Really?” Nelson considered them, gravely. 

“Do you mean to say, Nel’, that you haven’t 
seen her this week?” 

“She did me the honor of dining with me, 
on the “Left Bank,” last Monday night,” said 
Nelson, his eyes laughing, his face and voice 
exceedingly grave. 

Seymour and Dunbar grinned at one another. 
“Well, it’s great. A week ago, one short week! 
—the four of us were dining together, clinging 
together, thinking like one. Now—” 

“It’s different?” suggested Nelson. 

“The very important question is, is the 
change her fault, or ours?” 

“Fault?” Nelson thought it over. “I called 
her up Monday morning and asked her to dine. 
I told her I was sick of having you two dubs 
in the way of an entirely intellectual contact, 
and I wanted her to myself.” 

They chuckled a moment over their coffee. 
“Did she talk to you about “going to school,” 
as she puts it?” asked Dunbar. 


136 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“I mostly did the talking,” smiled Nelson 
reminscently. “What do you mean by school ?” 

“I had hours of the same song on Tuesday 
night,” said Seymour. “Only Pm damned if 
I think it funny. The poor girl’s pathetic. All 
that money and looks, and no friends. No 
women friends. What can a man do about it? 
She’d—” he smiled and tried to swim to a 
phrase. “There’s so much of her, and so lone¬ 
some, but I don’t know any women who’d like 
her—” 

“She’s perfectly nutty on the subject of wom¬ 
en friends,” said Dunbar. 

Nelson took his time. “You think she means 
it—all this fuss about school and lessons?” 

“She does,” said Dunbar. “First she’s bent 
on seeing Raymond. She’s very heady about 
that. Cosgrieve thinks it foolish. He says that 
Raymond won’t see things as she wants him 
to. Few men could. She just wants to “quit 
friends” but, woman-like wants a scene. Cos¬ 
grieve keeps putting her off, hoping she won’t 
go down. And that over, she vows she’s going 
to cut out everything and learn to “behave 
herself” and how to spend her money I” 

“It’s amusing—the whole story,” said Nel- 


DIFFERENT 


137 


son absently. “She’s involved herself with a 
very animated audience of four now—you two, 
Cosgrieve and me. She’ll have to make good; 
very good indeed. It will be interesting to see 
the first act—a suite in her hotel perhaps— 
shades of Pershing, Mary and Doug’ I Lessons 
in French from indignant aristocrats—conver¬ 
sations, perhaps with Raymond Duncan I Or 
perhaps, cleverly, none of that, but a convent. 
That ” he laughed gaily, “would lead to a 
third act with a gorgeous get-away, over the 
garden wall. She’s really very entertaining, 
very suggestive. I could write ten novels about 
her.” 

“She’s not joking, Nel’,” insisted Seymour. 

“Nor am I,” said Nelson. 

“I’m the goat of the situation,” laughed 
Dunbar. “You see I brought her that first 
Sunday night. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I 
thought she was game. Girls now don’t care— 
“above caring,” he laughed, not too mirthfully. 
“She always was a funny kid. A beauty, and all 
the high-school wanting to carry her books for 
her. She was fun —but she always got away. 
She walked with her head up. She didn’t seem 
to care for girls. She used to walk to school 


138 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


with her father—on his way to his office. She 
was a funny kid. She knows, of course, that 
we’ve got a lot of friends that she never meets. 
This isn’t a village, after all. Girl-friends, I 
mean. She knows that groggy old Chatham 
knows our friends, and that Chatham’s girls 
of course do not. We let her in on Chatham’s 
girls. Of course, it’s hard to answer!” He 
laughed, but caught himself back. “She thinks 
I wouldn’t have dared to let her in for Chat¬ 
ham’s girls except that she was a nobody at 
home. Poorkiddo! But what can a man do?” 
He laughed with sudden gaiety. “You know, 
there isn’t a soul in our little old home town 
who wouldn’t think me after her money, if 
they knew I was eating about nine dinners a 
week with her. She’s really a peach, and it’s 
all aarned unjust, and silly. But think of the 
girls we know? There isn’t one of them who 
would stand for her.” 

“It’s very hard to be so beautiful,” smiled 
Nelson, smoking absently. “Of course, being 
monumental, and beautiful, does not protect 
one against being lonesome.” Then, gaily look¬ 
ing from one to the other, “You two should 
toss pennies—marry her—?” 


DIFFERENT 139 

“Fat chance we’d have to get her,” grinned 
Dunbar. 

“She wants Raymond back,” said Seymour. 
“In love with her husband. Funny old-fash¬ 
ioned streak in her. Sweet, I think. I’ll bet 
my French bonds that she gets him back, too.” 

“I won’t take your bet, but frankly I hope 
that Bill comes back. She’d be safer?” he 
smiled. “If she’s really seriously disposed to 
have herself turned and trimmed, she can go 
rather far. She’s very disquieting, floating 
about, like a lovely ship—a ship of state—the 
American state. Poor Gold-Elsie!” 

“I told her to try herself out with French 
lessons,” said Dunbar. 

“The dickens you did?” smiled Nelson. 
“What about English lessons?” 

They stared at one another, forgetting to 
laugh. 

“You know,” said Dunbar, “my two sisters 
would simply die if they knew I was going about 
with her. What on earth are we all up to any¬ 
way, with her?” 

For the first time, the question briefly put, 
was hung between them, and they all sat look¬ 
ing at it, faintly startled. 


140 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“A nice question,” said Nelson. “Her sort 
is reasonably clear. We are four men, four 
different sorts. We can scarcely all four have 
the same aim, and still, I fancy, that’s the way 
of it.” 

“And what do you mean by that?” demanded 
Seymour. 

“I mean that it will exactly depend upon 
what she does with each of us. Not in the 
least on us.” 

That made silence, shock, and Dunbar and 
Seymour sat back in their chairs. Then, “It 
seems—rather rotten, talking about her,” said 
Seymour. “She’s so straight. It comes over 
me pretty often that we’ve got a great deal, 
aside from her, as women go, and she’s nothing 
but us, as men go. And no women at all.” 

“It/just comes over you, does it?” Nelson 
smiled. “In a nut-shell, our Elsie wants a wom¬ 
an friend. How we have failed!” he laughed. 
“She won’t find it on this earth,” he went on. 
“Not while she is young, and so desirable. She 
plays so straight, is really so good, and beauti¬ 
ful. No. Even behaving perfectly, and talk¬ 
ing less, and correctly, she will always be, is 
doomed to be, a man’s woman. But, you 


DIFFERENT 


141 


know,” he hesitated, looking from one to the 
other with sudden frankness, “if she’ll work, if 
she’s straight about it, I know exactly her 
school—a woman who could make her.” 

“Who—Nelson?” they asked him. 

“Why, Judith Ardley,” said Nelson. 

“Why—of course l” said Seymour, as the 
idea dawned upon him. “She’s the woman be¬ 
hind that first story of yours—“Failure’s 
Wife,” eh?” 

“Yes,” said Nelson. “And she’s—different.” 

“She’ll do it?” Dunbar querried. “She’ll 
bother with her?” 

Nelson forgot to answer. “She’s going soon, 
to see Raymond?” he asked. 

Dunbar nodded. “We’re going down in Cos- 
grieve’s car, or one of them, on Saturday after¬ 
noon.” 

“You’re going too, eh? To your own funer¬ 
al, old man?” Nelson laughed. “That’s really 
very decent of you—” 

“Sour grapes,” chuckled Dunbar. 

“We’re late” said Seymour, looking at his 
watch. 

They were, and they hurried. As they 
crossed the wide Place Vendome toward the 


142 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


great doors of their bank, Nelson said, “No 
word of Mrs. Ardley to Elsie, till IVe asked 
her. I mean till I’ve asked Mrs. Ardley.” 

“Right-oh,” said Dunbar. “A false hope 
would kill the kiddo, now.” 

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Nelson smiled, as in¬ 
side the bank they parted, each to his job. 


X 

JUDITH 

Mrs. Ardley smiled with pleasure, over Nel¬ 
son’s card. “Serve the tea in the petit salon, 
Therese. Toast, and the Sevres tea-things,” 
she said to the maid. 

She found Nelson at the window, looking 
through the lace at the streetJbelow. It was a 
narrow street, just off the Avenue du Bois de 
Bologne. “My dear boy, I am so happy to see 
you.” She looked affectionately down upon the 
back of his fine head as he bent over her hands. 
“It has been long, ever so long, since you have 
been here. Have you brought me something to 
read?” She spoke slowly, surely, deliciously, 
her fineness, her delicately flowered, silvery 
dress, her gesture, her room and her grey eyes 
all at one, and all beautiful. 

143 


144 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“Yes, there’s something to read—another 
chapter.” He laid a manuscript upon her little 
desk. “But I came, aside from just wanting 
to, for a mad reason, Judith—” He stood 
peering at her, suddenly laughing. “It seems a 
ridiculous reason, when I see you—sweet and 
quiet as you are. It is good to see you always. 
Perhaps I’ll never even tell you the real 
reason!” 

She sat with her chin on her hand, her soft 
lace-lined sleeve falling back from her arm, 
her eyes smiling over him. 

“Lucky to find you alone, I am. May I stay 
a long time?” he asked boyishly. 

“I’ve told Therese to make our tea,” she 
said. “You may stay long enough. I’m awful¬ 
ly tired, Nel’-dear, and had absolutely taken the 
afternoon off. I forbade Therese to answer the 
telephone. I don’t know why I am so tired. 
Getting old, perhaps. Certainly I can’t drive 
work and play together as lightly as I used to 
do. Before the war it seemed rather like fun to 
me. But now, the American woman with 
money to spend—heavens but she is fatigu¬ 
ing. One’s friends used to have money 
to spend. They, poor dears, dress now in bar- 


JUDITH 145 

gains. And, working for people who could not 
possibly be one’s friends is really work.” 

Nelson shifted his long thin legs in their 
grey summer flannels, and laughed a little, ‘‘Be¬ 
fore you have made confession absolutely im¬ 
possible, I might as well tell you that it is about 
one of them, the very headiest queen of them 
all—a new woman spender—that I have come. 
I’m sorry, but it is.” 

Judith gave a gesture of amused hopelessness 
with her fine hands. “And I let you in on my 
day of rest; trusted you!” Affectionately she 
considered him, in the great arm chair before 
her. “One is never let off!” she sighed ab¬ 
sently. 

“You? Of course not. Being on is your 
genius. You shouldn’t even dream of rest. 
And now,” he bent toward her, laughing, “the 
monstrous moment of them all is hustling up to 
you. Rest? Poor Judith!” He stooped to 
peer at her, touched her soft sleeve. “When 
this rich young blonde, oh, twice your size and 
so beautiful that she lifts bulk to a pitch, once 
finds you, you’ll never have another moment’s 
rest in all your life. She’ll need you so, and 
you will so need her!” 


146 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“You mean,” Judith puzzled over him, “that 
she wants clothes?—toggery, they call it now.” 

“No,” he looked at her gravely. “She’s got 
clothes. Too many clothes. She wants a soul.” 

Judith’s grey eyes opened, astounded, then a 
ripple of mirth glinted across. “What on 
earth can that have to do with what I want* 
Nel’—dear? There’s no commission on souls. 
Unless there’s something new in shops that I 
don’t know about?” 

“There’s nothing new in shops that you don’t 
know about,” he gaily reassured her. “The 
only soul-shop that I ever heard of is right 
here, your own.” 

“You aren’t going to take my last breath, 
dear boy, by telling me that you have fallen in 
love with—something new?” 

“Oh dear, no,” he reassured her. “I’m not 
greatly changed. I’ve been living a lunchless 
life for the love of a very old table for the last 
two weeks. No, I’m not hungry now” he as¬ 
sured her. “The table was paid for the day 
before yesterday.” He was watching her hands 
among the tender old Sevres tea-things, think¬ 
ing how lovely she was, how satisfying. And 
fifty; as old as his mother. “No, I’m not going 


JUDITH 147 

to tell you that. I’m not in love with her. Not 
in a dangerous way. She’s a big, warm, sweet 
young thing, but very obvious. I get bored 
with obvious women. I know better. I mean, 
she is terribly dangerous, Judith, for with all 
that untamed warmth and gorgeousness, she’s 
very— good. I fancy she rather detests me. 
I’m not in love with her, but I am very much 
intrigued with the woman she might become. 
With a soul, you see, Judith?” 

Judith beat the air with her hands. “You 
are a true-to-type man!” she smiled. “You’d 
have me sacrifice my peace, give her my soul—” 

“Oh,” he gasped, “what a terrible idea!” 

“Write it then, the idea, but leave me my 
soul,” she laughed softly. “You are a dear boy 
after all.” 

“Do you really detest these times, Judith?” 
he wondered over her. “I think I’m rather in 
love with it all—the spectacle. Clashing, cruel, 
bold, tyrannical, spending, jazzing creatures. 
And—so frightened! All the row and silliness 
just to cover up the swarming little fears. A 
gorgeous blonde with her soul not found, with 
all her money and not a soul-shop that she 
knows of on earth. Typical, eh? Why hate her, 


148 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Judith. Why? You two were, simply, born 
to irritate and teach one another! What a 
show you two would make! The Soul and the 
Body. The super-spectacle.” 

‘‘And what is she to teach me?” Judith de¬ 
manded, her voice clear and bright. She 
glanced defensively over her perfect little 
room. 

“Oh,” he protested, “she won’t, she could 
not change you. But she will cheer you up— 
brighten you. Not for all the blondes on the 
earth would I risk your being changed. You 
dear and beautiful woman, you scorn, ever so 
kindly, of course, but you know how your kind¬ 
ness is cruel to the new and crude.” 

“But you, Nel’! You have always been much 
more cruel about them than I. I’ve got to ac¬ 
cept them to make my living. And they are 
usually good sorts, and generous, and appreci¬ 
ative—” 

Nelson’s gay laugh stopped her. 

“You see, I must hang onto the band-wagon, 
but you may be as much of a snob as you 
please,” she smiled reproachfully. 

“Not with my gorgeous blonde about, I 
can’t,” he assured her. He studied her, smiling, 


JUDITH 149 

thinking something over. “You’ve been to the 
Belgian picture show?” he asked her irrele¬ 
vantly. 

“Yes, of course,” she looked at him with a 
touch of impatience. “Who hasn’t?’* 

“Looked at the Stevens?” 

“Yes,” she smiled. “Of course I have, and,” 
she added with spirit, “you are not to tell me 
that I am like those sweet women of his, all in 
dotted swiss and with the light upon their hair.” 

“No,” he laughed, “but you might be. You 
see you are not allowed to stop. They call it 
crystalizing now. I won’t have it. My new, 
formidable blonde doll to whom you are to give 
a soul, won’t have it. She will shock you, stir 
you and irritate you horribly, but she will carry 
you on vividly with her. You, delicate thing, 
in her strong, blonde arms. God, what arms 
they are, Judith! She will give you a wonder¬ 
ful life. She’s as tall as I am, just. You dear, 
you’ll be forced, by her power , Judith, to stand 
on your tip-toes, and to bruise your hands in 
moulding her. It’s going to be mighty tough 
work,” he laughed at her dismay. 

“But I won’t undertake it,” she told him. 
“You are simply not talking sense, Nel’.” 


150 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


“Oh yes you will,” he told her. “It’s your 
chance, Judith Ardley, to crown your long 
drawn-out insipid “job” with the making of a 
masterpiece. You know perfectly well, if left 
to yourself, you’ll gradually sit back and fade 
out. I,” he laughed again, “simply won’t allow 
it, I tell you! I’m pretending to buy a doll a 
soul, but I’m really just saving you.” 

“But you terrify me, Nel’ I What are you 
really telling me? You give me a picture of 
myself—held up on a dazzling flood—my 
pretty quiet rooms floating away from me, like 
boxes. I’m so peaceful here, and you come 
bothering me about some young blond crea¬ 
ture. I hate her already.” \ 

“Too peaceful,” he stuck to it. “It won’t 
do, you know. Nobody really wants peace or 
we’d have it. Modern people don’t like peace. 
You’ve got to play the game, my Judith. And 
the game is clashings and contrasts. And, in 
spite of this sweet grey place you cling to up 
here, you want to play the game. Everybody 
does. The only outsiders are the ones who 
can’t play. You are simply fooling! yourself.” 

She looked about her, through the open 
doors into the salon, and Nelson’s eyes fol- 


JUDITH 151 

lowed hers to the closed piano. It was covered 
with grey velvet. There were things, a lamp 
and flowers, upon it, and a closed violin-case. 
“You made me cry with that story of yours— 
about his music,” she told Nelson softly. “You 
were too true, in that story,” she reproached 
him. “I don’t think one should do that, do 
you? Really? About one’s friends?” 

“Not as true as truth,” he reminded her. 
“When I think of the yearsj' that you shopped 
to support him. He, a lazy, beauty-parlor 
idol.” They were still a moment. “It is 
sweet up here, and peaceful,” he went on. “And 
you are dying hard. Of course you’ll do it 
finely. But, in secret, Judith, you stand in 
there with your locked piano and violin, and 
you are frightened. You have really resolved, 
more than once to sell all the old stuff and go in 
for willow and chintz. Now, haven’t you ? And 
you look out between the curtains, and you 
wonder if you might not plunge in and like it. 
The new current. The idea of plunging in 
haunts you. You give your desire away in the 
very way you do your hair. You’ve conceded, 
—you’ve pulled it down over your ears. 
Peace?” he laughed sharply. “That’s the lie 


152 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

I lost my ribs for. Don’t blather to me about 
peace! Do you remember my friends, Seymour 
and Jo Dunbar?” 

“Of course. You know that I do,” she 
sighed lightly. “What have they to do with 
it?” 

“I don’t know. They are both—in love with 
her. If that’s being in love. We have all been 
looking after her. Also a man named Cos- 
grieve.” 

“I know him quite well,” said Judith. “I 
helped his two sisters with their trousseaux, 
quite long ago, before the war. Dear girls 
they were, too. He likes her?” 

“I said love,” smiled Nelson. “But I don’t 
know Cosgrieve. Dunbar and Seymour have 
been looking after her—badly and selfishly, 
like men. Man’s selfishness simply pursues the 
beautiful child. She’s so damned handsome; a 
man struts to show her off. Of course he makes 
an ass of himself, but that does nothing for 
her. She’s alone and lonesome. She just “goes 
along.” We have dined her, and considerably 
wined her. We have not in the least protected 
her from Johnny Chatham and his stud of girls. 
Last night, Judith, in the glare of a restaurant, 


JUDITH 153 

she cried like a big hurt baby because we had 
mixed her up with Chatham’s “street rags.” 
That’s her name for them, not mine. She 
wailed that she had never been introduced to a 
single one of our mothers or sisters. She cried 
herself into a red and purple temper, and she 
laid us out.” 

“But,” said Judith Ardley indignantly, “she 
was perfectly right.” 

“You dear!” Nelson shone upon her. “You 
hit the very nail. She is always right—discon¬ 
certingly right. As right as Ben Franklin or 
Abraham Lincoln. She is the one hundred 
per cent best American. That is just the 
reason why you must teach her how to behave 
herself. You see, it’s her speech—her voice. 
And being all gold, and monumental, for she 
is just that—monumental—it’s difficult. You 
see?” 

“But really, Nel’ dear, I can’t give her gram¬ 
mar lessons!” 

“As to mere grammar rules, she knows them, 
better than you or I.” 

“What do you want me to do for her, dear 
boy?” Then, warily, “Who is she?” 

Nelson, with the sudden thought of telling 


154 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

Judith Ardley all about Elsie’s “Mama” and 
her hairpin money, shook with laughter. 

“But, a young woman, a blonde, a monu¬ 
mental blonde, who cries in a restaurant I Oh 
no!” Judith defended herself. 

“You know,” said Nelson oddly, “I think 
it was rather wonderfully sweet, her crying like 
a big kid at Weber’s Tavern. She had every 
man in the place ready to murder us.” 

Judith shuddered. “What is the rich child’s 
name ?” she asked absently. 

“Mrs. Raymond,” said Nelson. “Elsie Ray¬ 
mond. Mrs. Bill Raymond,” he laughed at her 
bewildered face. 

“Mrs.— ?” Judith gasped. “But where on 
earth is Bill then?” 

“Somewhere in France,” smiled Nelson. 
Then, sitting in the quiet, delicately faded 
room, Nelson told all that he knew about Elsie. 
He talked till Judith sent him away. “You 
have hypnotized me. Do go, and give me time 
to think. Besides I’m dining with a girl who 
wants a trousseau. I must not be late, or weary, 
or absent-minded, or dull. The girl is horribly 
rich and independent! She’ll chuck me if I 
bore her.” 


JUDITH 155 

“Judith—dear,” said Nelson standing before 
her, age so oddly, so charmingly forgotten be¬ 
tween them, “just use your head, and make the 
very most of this chance. You are precisely 
what Elsie needs.” 

“Gold Elsie?” murmured Judith with a cyni¬ 
cal shrug. 

He shook his head sadly. “I’d hoped that 
you wouldn’t call her that. You. Everybody 
does, once or twice! But Judith, I’m in terrible 
earnest. You’ll be able to chuck the shops, the 
tiresome brides and their trousseaux, and the 
compromising way of commissions. You’ll be 
so glad to I” 

“To chuck them?—my dream I” she con¬ 
fessed. “It’s a long, hard death, being 
smotherd out by frillies,” she smiled. “You 
have no idea how tired I am.” 

“Yes I have,” he insisted. “Tonight, Judith, 
read my story, my chapter, after you’ve got rid 
of your silly bride and her frillies. Will you? 
The little girl in my story is only about half 
the size of Elsie, but she, poor child, gets 
smothered out of life, though not quite for the 
same reason. But smothered. You are already 
responsible for Elsie. You are your sister’s 


156 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


keeper. I can tell by the desperate look in 
your eyes that you feel it, know it, Judith. 
Elsie’s your fate I” And with a laugh he rose 
to leave her. 

When he’d gone she found herself looking 
out between the curtains. He’d said she’d do 
that. She stood by the draped piano and the 
violin-case. Failure’s Wife, Nelson had called 
her in his story. Now she was becoming little 
more than a relic—Failure’s relic. The room, 
the whole apartment seemed so shadowy and 
still, without his young voice— 


XI 

MARIE-LOU PLEADS FOR ELSIE 

Late that same night, Judith Ardley, 
propped luxuriously among pale rose embroid¬ 
ered pillows in her beautiful bed, rested for 
a little while. She’d dined with a dull eager 
girl who wanted a trousseau. “Friend-clients” 
Nelson had dubbed her shoppers. With this 
girl she’d been bored beyond the telling. Her 
hands, that Nelson so frankly loved to look at, 
rested upon his manuscript. It was the last 
chapter of his first book. She realized a little 
of what it meanti to him—a young man’s first 
novel. He was such a rebel about the rules 
of the game. She’d begged him to be happier 
in his themes, and he’d said, “Oh damn all that. 
I will be when I am.” She loved Nelson’s re- 
tiscences. They gave value to his confessions. 

157 


158 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


She knew she’d been able to help him with her 
untroubling love. He’d not filled, of course, 
the gap her war-killed son had left in her life, 
but he’d helped her to go on living. She’d so 
needed sympathy and had found it so hard to 
take. She loved his acid-sweet ways that 
smiled, and helped to smile, no matter what 
stood back. “Funny, stubby writing,” she 
smiled. “Stubby like his eye-lashes, and like 
them, letting one in for things!” He certainly 
had been letting her in for things with his pre¬ 
posterous big blonde doll, his new Gold-Elsie! 
She shuddered. And now, this last chapter— 
even that, he’d said, would help Elsie. She 
laughed, remembering his laugh, and then she 
began to read. 


MARIE-LOU 
Chapter 31 

I 

The door of Anna’s living-room burst open 
and Adele came in unannounced,, her agonized 
face excusing conduct. Anna’s own maid stood 
back in the hall, stiff and indignant, then closed 
the door again, disdainfully. Anna stood 
shocked, waiting. Adele could not speak, spread 


MARIE-LOU PLEADS 


159 


her hands, and dropped them, some alarming 
wordless story told in her gesture. Her tear- 
stained eyes looked like black thumb-strokes 
upon the powdered pallor of her face. ‘‘Oh 
Madame l” She came close, imploringly, a 
note in her shaking hand. “Come quick with 
me. It is from Mademoiselle Marie-Lou—” 

Anna, stiff, with fright, took the note. She 
gave the cowering Adele a glance. Adele was 
traditional, a perfect ‘maid’ from a play of in¬ 
trigue. In her ears were false pearls, her 
square face was soft with powder, her hair 
was black—too black. And her eyes—wise, 
round, shallow black eyes, were like traps. A 
sad sort of maid for a Marie-Lou! Anna, try¬ 
ing not to face the thing before her, resolved to 
warn Marie-Lou about Adele. Marie-Lou 
must send Adele away. She gave a bad impres¬ 
sion. Her own hands, more swift than steady, 
tore open the envelope, while she held to her 
senses with her useless resolving. 

“Anna dearest, 

“I am doing a thing that takes all my cour¬ 
age. It is so very hard to go away from you, 
my dear, dear friends! You will surely know 
how hard it is. And it isn’t going to be happy 


160 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

for you, to do the things I must ask you to do 
for me, but I see no other way. And I know 
that you will forgive me. 

“Please come back with Adele, and bring 
Hal’ with you. And do not any of you come 
into my room alone. Hal’ will know what to 
do. Men are all so efficient, Anna dear, and 
we can’t seem even to learn to be at all. Men 
always have a plan. They know what to do. 
I think, though maybe it sounds foolish—even 
a little mad, that it is just that that I can no 
longer endure, that has made me see what a 
failure I am. Just that lack of efficiency that 
has broken my heart with the grief of seeing 
myself. So weak, and useless, and helpless, 
Anna! I don’t know what to do. I never 
know, never will know. 

“There is a paper on my piano, and another 
on my desk. They will tell you, in detail, what 
I’d like to have done with my things and with 
me. And Anna—dear, I will thank you—some¬ 
how. You will know that I do. I do now, 
with all the strength there is left in this tired- 
out heart of mine. 

“No one in particular is in the least to blame 
for what I am doing. I want to say that to 


MARIE-LOU PLEADS 


161 


you Anna, clearly, so that you will always 
really know that it is true. Nothing could 
be more dreadful to me than that anyone 
should be blamed. Paris, my life here 
near you, and our little group of friends, 
has been too beautiful, too wonderful 
for me. Too full of the utmost that I can 
understand of beauty and of tragedy, for me. 
Hopeless and luckless me! Whichever way I 
turn. I can’t endure any more of it. I can’t 
go on. I see the rest, the something bigger and 
impersonal, that you my dear gifted friends 
understand, possess; but I can’t take it. Every¬ 
thing, everything hurts me so! You all seem 
always to be so sweetly sharing gifts with me, 
that I do not know what to do with. You see, 
Anna? I look, all the time, at beautiful things 
beyond me. I am starving inside my own un¬ 
breakable limitations. And Anna, as I have 
grown to love your beauty of mind, all of your 
minds, I have come to hate your skill. It’s 
jealousy—not ugly jealously, but just longing 
that makes me hate it. I haven’t any skill! I 
can’t speak. I can’t do anything. I am not 
even loved. Not necessary to anyone. Being 
young I can comfort you tired ones. I see that. 


162 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


But I’ll be old and horrible in my uselessness 
one day. It makes me so unhappy to distress 
you, but I can’t go without trying to tell you 
why, can I? You dear, dear friends of mine. 
How you have hurt me sometimes. Just tor¬ 
tured me. I can’t stand it any longer. You 
have shown me beauty, usefulness, power; and 
I’ve sat by, useless and mute. If I had music 
or painting, or writing. If I even had some¬ 
thing, some one, as an outlet for all I feel! My 
heart is tired out, just broken, Anna, and the 
life chokes me, and I can’t, can’t say it! Do you 
see, Anna? 

“Forgive me, dear, dear friends, for so 
troubling you. I believe, really believe, that 
I’ll find rest now, and peace. Try to think of 
me that way. And try a little to justify me! 
I have justified myself. My love, my love, 
Anna dear, to you all! 

MARIE-LOU.” 


II 

The taxi with its three white faces peering 
out drew up at the apartment house in the 
narrow old Paris street. The dank walls rose 


MARIE-LOU PLEADS 163 

to the sky, up to their dormer windows and 
Marie-Lou’s window boxes. 

“No place for a girl to live anyway,” Hal’ 
complained as they climbed the stairs to face 
the mystery of how Marie-Lou had chosen to 
g°. 

Adele unlocked the door and, close together, 
the three went in. The curtains were drawn. 
“My letter,” said Adele softly, “was on the 
kitchen table, with the one for you, Madame.” 

They went into the living-room together, 
Hal’ brusquely opening the curtains. They 
breathed and looked about. On the black piano 
lay a piece of paper: “I am in my bedroom. 
No one is to come in alone. There is money in 
my desk, plenty, I think, for everything. My 
home address is there, and a letter to my 
people. It tells them everything there is to 
tell. And if it isn’t too difficult, I’d like to be 
cremated.—Goodbye again. 

M.-L.” 

The three, close together again, Adele her 
face half-covered with her crumpled apron, 
faced the bedroom door. “I am in my bed¬ 
room. No one is to come in alone.” Anna 


164 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

opened the door—softly, slowly, carefully, till 
it was wide. 

There she lay, little Marie-Lou crumpled, 
her face upon her arm, the hard bright little 
pistol flung across the room. 

Ill 

“No, no, no, Madame, I regret,” the police 
in charge told Anna. “Though it is a very 
clear case of suicide, no suicide may be cre¬ 
mated. It might, after all, Madame, turn out 
to have been a crime.” That had made Anna 
stagger, left her blank and wordless as midday 
light. 

Anna was up there alone with Marie-Lou. 
Hal’ had gone to tell the others, to cable her 
family, to do all he could. Adele was sitting 
in her darkened kitchen. Anna stood by a 
window. Her shoulder touched the sloping 
wall, her hand the closed piano. ‘It might, 
after all, Madame, turn out to have been a 
crime.’ “Oh,” she gasped to the April clouds 
flying high above the roofs, “It was a crime— 
a city crime. It was death by a two edged knife. 
It was we, her friends, who killed little Marie- 


MARIE-LOU PLEADS 


165 


Lou. With our skill—our glib skill, our dam¬ 
nable efficiency! Poor immutable little girl!” 
And she went to the bed where Marie-Lou 
was lying, at peace. On her knees, her warm 
arm across the voiceless body, she begged for¬ 
giveness, in her tears. But little Marie-Lou 
was more than ever still. 

Then, the next morning, Judith sent Nelson 
his answer. 

“My dear Nel\ 

“Your Marie-Lou has pleaded successfully 
for your Elsie, though I can’t help feeling that 
she—your new gold goddness—will pull my 
quiet world down and laugh at my dust. But I 
don’t want to hurt anybody with my “glib facil¬ 
ities.” What a humbleness you throw over all 
my harmless sophistication! 

“Why not bring the band to dine with me? 
“Seymour and Dunbar” as you call them? 
Why not bring her without any idea of why? 
Just to see if, possibly, we can be friends? One 
night next week; Thursday if you like, at eight 
o’clock. I warn you that Pm not eager, that 


166 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


I won’t be bullied, and that I shall, mercilessly, 
put her through her paces. 

“As to Mari e-Lou—I want to look at you 
when I tell you what I think of her. 

Affectionately, 

JUDITH ARDLEY.” 


XII 

THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

(A sketch for a play by Richmond Nelson , 
after he had listened to Dunbar tell of Elsie } s 
night at Cosgrieve 1 s chateau and her interview 
with Bill Raymond). 

(Elsie, arrives at Cosgrieve’s place, his 
chateau, the first edifice deserving the name that 
she has ever seen. With her, Dunbar and Cos- 
grieve. The place is splendid—beauty caught 
back just in time from ruin. The scene: a 
terrace. Wide lawn and a garden sweep from 
the glass doors and many windows of the great 
panelled salon to a low stone wall, the wall 
fretted and rusted with lichens. Along the 
wall is a double row of tilleul trees, an alley 
of thick leaves making shade in the hottest 
noontime. The terrace wall drops down and 
167 


168 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


down to a road below that winds from the 
great main gate, over Cosgrieve’s miles. Miles 
of lovely France, washed in blue and gold air, 
away to the tree-embroidered sky-line—sheep 
grazing, little houses in great clumps of trees, 
brooks with stone-arched bridges, flower- 
starred grass—a tapestry). 

SCENE ONE 

(On the terrace. Elsie, looking tall in her 
long, light silky coat and veils, is seated in a 
deep garden chair. Dunbar and Cosgrieve 
with her, and an old servant arranging the 
tea. They have just arrived. A maid disap¬ 
pears with wraps on her arm. Elsie lets her 
coat slip off her shoulders and looks about 
her). 

Elsie: Well, this is the real cheese, eh? 

Cosgrieve: Glad you think so. I have word 
that Raymond will be at the stables waiting for 
me in a quarter-hour. He wants me, at once, 
before the night, to ride over certain fields with 
him. I’m tired, but he’s never tired. So that’s 
that. He bosses me just as he bosses the place 
—splendidly. You two stay here, just where 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 169 


you are, and Dunbar, you just casually hang 
over the wall as we go by and look at my land¬ 
scape. I am determined that you shall see Ray¬ 
mond, Elsie, before you make up your mind to 
disturb him. We’ll ride by, just under the 
wall. You, Elsie, can watch from under the 
tilleuls. Raymond has played into our hands, 
poor lad. When you have seen him, I hope 
you’ll see it as I do—better to let well enough 
alone! 

Elsie: Bill never says that about anything, 
does he? Anyway, you are mighty kind. 

Cos grieve exits by the salon door . Elsie 
opens her cigarette-case, Dunbar stands by her 
chair with a light . 

Jo’ Dunbar, I’m all in. I’m simply scared 
to death. 

Dunbar: (Munching cake, ruminates) 

You’ve nothing to lose. Just don’t let Ray¬ 
mond see you. Cosgrieve can be trusted to 
look after Raymond. Great chap, Cosgrieve, 
isn’t he? 

Elsie: Think so? Really? 

Dunbar: Gone on you, isn’t he, old girl? 
Like the rest of us. 

Elsie: Very like—the rest of youl 


170 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Dunbar: (Laughs gaily) Well, well, the 
wall is high enough! You can see without be¬ 
ing seen, eh? After they’ve got by, you can 
come to the edge and have a real look. Lordy, 
Elsie, but it’s a lovely old place. Money is 
power all-right, all-right. 

Elsie: It hasn’t done much for me . 

Dunbar: Hasn’t it? (laughs significantly) 
You look very white around the gills, old girl. 
Brace up! You know it was your own little 
idea to come down here. Now you’ve got your 
way, you’ve got to play the game. 

Elsie: (Insolently) I’ll play the game, Joey, 
and right over your silly head. Don’t you be 
frightened. 

Dunbar hears voices, and the clatter of 
hoofs. Rises and hurries to the wall . Elsie 
runs to her place in the shadow of the tilleuls . 

Dunbar: (Turning and gazing at Elsie who 
moves a step nearer to him). What a man , by 
Jove! 

Elsie: They are coming?—Jo? (Looks 

helpless, panicky). 

Dunbar: (Nods) They are coming through 
the gates into the road. He looks as if he 
owned the place—Raymond does, I mean. 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 171 


Raymond and Cosgrieve ride by, stopping a 
moment to chat with Dunbar, whom Cosgrieve 
presents to Raymond. 

Raymond’s voice: Too bad you didn’t bring 
Mr. Dunbar along, Cosgrieve. The place looks 
wonderful after the rains of last week. 

Cosgrieve: Never thought of it! Dunbar’s 
a city product. We’ll bring him around to¬ 
morrow. 

They ride on. Elsie moves forward slowly, 
like a sleep-walker. Dunbar joins her, catching 
her arm, cautioning prudence. She shakes him 
off, looks him up and down, and deliberately 
leans on the wall, in full light. She throws 
everything into the risk, just to see Raymond. 
Dunbar, amused as alarmed, stands back, 
watching for consequences. 

SCENE TWO 
(What Elsie sees). 

Raymond is riding with ease, his hand upon 
the living bronze arch of the horse’s neck, 
chatting with Cosgrieve. He is the picture of 
health. He is very groomed, but is dressed in 
rustic flannels, open at the throat, and high 


172 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


army boots. At the far end of the wall the 
terrace curves back, showing a slope of mead¬ 
ows, rich in yellow grain and flaming poppies. 
Against old trees at the crest of a slope, is a 
farm house, a path dropping down through the 
grain to the road. The road passes, curves 
outward and disappears into the dark trees. 
Lovely, peaceful, traditional,—more tapestry. 

As Elsie leans far out to see, the girl comes 
running down the path, waving a letter for Ray¬ 
mond. She gives him the letter, Raymond’s 
hand catching her hand with the paper. She 
goes round to Cosgrieve and shakes hands with 
him, chatting gaily, with many gestures. Then 
she stands a moment, her hand upon the neck 
of Raymond’s horse, looking up at him while 
he reads. She stands back at the foot of the 
path. Raymond and Cosgrieve lift their hats. 
The late afternoon sun enters into the scene, 
drenching them in light, making their every 
gesture tell, beautifying them. The girl’s dress 
is white and all but sleeveless—the French¬ 
woman’s summer uniform. She is very slim, 
and tanned, and her black hair is clear-drawn 
against the wheat. 

The men ride on, the girl watching Bill, 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 173 


Elsie watching them, Dunbar watching Elsie. 
At the edge of the wood Raymond glances back 
at the girl. She waves her two high-lifted 
hands. The horsemen disappear. She breaks 
off a tall weed and trails it aimlessly at the 
edge of the path as she goes idly back to the 
house, and in at the door. She walks listlessly, 
as if Raymond had taken the light away with 
him. The world is still; the woods, meadow, 
house with fine rising smoke; all still. As still 
as tapestry hung in an empty room. 

SCENE THREE 

Elsie comes slowly back to her chair, sits 
looking before her, turning her rings. She 
looks up at Dunbar; laughs shockingly. She 
lights a cigarette, chokes down the smoke to 
stop her tears. She turns away from Dunbar, 
who, all sympathy, comes and sits near her. 
The old servant comes out and clears away the 
tea-things. She sits watching the servant, her 
chin on her hand, unstrung, wholly dejected. 

Cos grieve enters by path up the garden. He 
stands y peering across the flowers at Elsie. 
There is a clap-clap of hoofs—Raymond pass - 


174 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

ing under the wall with the two horses. Elsie 
stares at Cosgrieve, then gives him y suddenly> 
a reckless smile. Cosgrieve hurries to her . 

Cosgrieve: You saw—? Elsie? 

(Elsie’s voice fails her). 

Dunbar: I’ll toddle along and dress for 
dinner, and leave you two to fight it out. 

Cosgrieve: Toddle along if you like, old 
man, but don’t dress. Only the three of us, you 
know. 

Dunbar: (Going) That suits me! 

Cosgrieve: (Standingbefore Elsie) Well—? 

Elsie: (Sharply) Very well, thank you I 

Cosgrieve: You see now that it is better to 
let him be? 

Elsie: No, I do not. Did you arrange all 
that scene down there? Quite like a movie—! 

Cosgrieve: You flatter me. The thing hap¬ 
pened just as it might have happened every day. 
I’m glad you saw it. 

Elsie: Glad, are you? Thanks. 

Cosgrieve: (Indignantly) While you 

watched them, I was watching you. You quite 
broke me up, Elsie. Dear girl, let Raymond 
be. Go your own way. You and Raymond are 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 175 


both right, but you are wrong together. You 
seem to be from different ends of the earth. 

Elsie: What on earth am I right for? Little 
parties with you, paper hats and too much to 
drink, and no idea what you all do between 
parties? That’s a lot to live for, eh? 

Cosgrieve flushes and walks to the wall. 
Elsie rises and walks after him. They face 
one another, their heads high. Cosgrieve 
smiles first. 

Cosgrieve: You certainly can’t imagine that 
you were made for love in a cottage, Elsie? 

Elsie: (Quivers) You think—Bill was made 
for that? 

Elsie turns from him y leans on the wall star¬ 
ing over the meadows all glowing in wine-red 
light. 

I’m—up against it! (pause) I know what to 
do for them, but where do I get off? 

Cosgrieve: Damn it, Elsie, you’ve nothing to 
do for them. You American women are so 
confoundedly philanthropic. You don’t know 
how to let a man’s little passing sins be! 

Elsie: Is that so! (Laughs oddly). 

Cosgrieve: (Studying her) Itis^o—my dear 
girl. 


176 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Elsie: (Paying no attention to him) You 
see, there’s an awful lot of me to get off . I can’t 
just raise the devil all night and sleep all day, 
and have—affairs. (She seems to turn the word 
over). Not that I’m any angel. But, I’d not 
know how, I’d be afraid. I really don’t want 
to. I’d fall in love and get the worst of it. 
I’m a hulk—a baby—and I’m just sick with the 
blues. I’m hopelessly good American. I’d like 
to be bad, but I can’t get away with it. 

Elsie stiffens, moves nearer to Cosgrieve, 
looking him in the eyes. He meets her half 
way, folds his arms, looks back at her. 

That’s what you’d like to make of me, 
wouldn’t you ? But you fool yourself more than 
you fool me, John Cosgrieve! That’s a man’s 
life, eh?—half the time fooling his family and 
all the time fooling himself? You’ve had it on 
your mind, haven’t you?—so much on your 
mind that you’ve got it into your mind, too. 
Almost! You’d like to take me and fall off the 
map with me, for a few wonderful little weeks, 

Cosgrieve looks straight into her eyes. She 
stands away from him, baffled by his steadiness. 

Cosgrieve: Yes I would like that, Elsie. 

Elsie: Well, you take it from me, you’d not 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 177 


like it long. I’ve got a conscience, and there’s 
a lot of me when I’m blue. I’d get homesick 
for the ways of my own boy-and-girl country. 
Your money and my money would only make it 
worse. There wouldn’t be a blessed thing to 
wish for. And it can buy a lot. I’m no angel. 
I’m not pretending. I’d have a grand time for 
a few days. But it’s not good enough. It’s 
not! (Her eyes fill, and she looks at Cosgrieve 
as if for help) Oh, I’m all mixed up! 

Cosgrieve: Be sensible and divorce Ray¬ 
mond, Elsie. Clean that up to start with. It’s 
not so bad; just form. Words and red-tape. 
Get yourself free and other things will take care 
of themselves. 

Elsie: (Flares in temper) Why don’t you 
get a divorce, if it’s so easy. Why wouldn’t 
you feel better to be free, too? What’s this 
funny difference between you and me ?—a man 
and a woman ? You and me! 

Cosgrieve: I have no reason for divorc¬ 
ing my wife, Elsie. She is much too good for 
me. We won’t talk of her—please! 

Elsie: (Looks at him a long moment, then 
turns and looks at the house down the road). 
For that matter, I haven’t either. The reasons 


178 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

are all Bill’s. Being free wouldn’t change any¬ 
thing—wouldn’t change any of the funny dif¬ 
ferences, would it? Free! Regular little clown 
of a word, eh ?—jumpin’ about and lookin’ two 
ways for Sunday? 

Cosgrieve: Don’t be so dreadful! 

Elsie: The truth isn’t too sweet, is it? 
(Comes close to Cosgrieve and stands to her 
inches) You want to know what I’m going to 
do with my freedom ? 

Cosgrieve: I want to know more than I want 
anything else just now. 

Elsie: (Mocking him) Just now! Well, 
you will see what I’ll do with it. I’m going to 
fool the last manjack of you. (Turns her back, 
moves to her chair, and picks up her long silky 
coat). What time did you say you have dinner ? 

Cosgrieve: We dine at eight o’clock. 

Elsie: (Strokes her coat, laughing at him) 
Dine, do you! It’s quite sure that Bill will 
come in tonight? 

Cosgrieve: Yes. He will come. He doesn’t 
dream that you are here, or even in France. 
He is coming, he thinks, to meet Dunbar. I 
feel rather a rotter about it, but if you are 
determined to see him, the quicker the better. 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 179 


Elsie: Talking sense at last! 

Elsie stands, smiling oddly. She looks at her 
diamond wrist-watch and moves to the salon 
door along the path between the flower-beds. 
She stands on the steps smiling at Cosgrieve. 
Cosgrieve, all patience, stands against the ter¬ 
race wall watching her. She waves a hand that 
glitters, and disappears into the house. 

SCENE FOUR 

It is eight o } clock. Cosgrieve and Dunbar, 
dressed as in the other scenes are waiting for 
Elsie in the beautiful old salon, with its many 
windows and high class doors giving upon the 
garden, the terrace, the tilleuls. Cosgrieve is 
mixing a cock-tail, the ingredients in fine old 
crystal, on a lacquered tray. 

Dunbar: (Looking about) Going to leave 
the place as it is, Cosgrieve? This room is 
certainly fine. 

Cosgrieve: Just as it is, only cared for, till 
it’s strong again! (Laughs softly) That’s what 
everything over here needs, and we are rich, 


180 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

and it’s up to us. (Whispers) Good God, Dun¬ 
bar !—Look at Elsie! 

The two men stand astounded. Elsie superb¬ 
ly vulgar and theatrical in a dress of beads and 
chiffon, crystal at her scarcely covered breast 
and shading down to sapphire at her feet, 
jewels all over her, a great blue feather fan in 
her hand, comes, painted to a mask, her head 
high, comes into the room. The old servant 
bows low to cover his astonishment and closes 
the door. She stands, insolently fanning her¬ 
self, smiling at their consternation. They are 
overwhelmed, embarrassed, astounded, speech¬ 
less. Elsie takes a cock-tail, then another. 
She goes to the mirror and reddens her mouth 
again. Cosgrieve holds himself, looks at Dun¬ 
bar, shrugs. Dunbar grins, staring at Elsie’s 
back. She sees them in the mirror, turns sharp¬ 
ly and looks them down. Dinner is announced. 
Dunbar stands, bowed double, in cynical 
homage, as Elsie passes out of the room. The 
two men follow. 

SCENE FIVE 

Back in the salon after dinner, the coffee 
being served. The dusk hangs at the tall 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 181 


windows, and the doors are open upon the old 
garden. Larkspur and hollyhocks, tall, pale, 
like flower-ghosts. The servant lights the 
candles on the mantleshelf, the many lights 
softly reflected in the beautiful old mirror. 
Elsie, in her outrageous paint and clothes, sits 
idly drinking her coffee. The men are chatter¬ 
ing together, of things and people she knows 
nothing of, ignoring her, punishing her 
stupidity. 

Cosgrieve: (Suddenly to Elsie) Elsie, it is 
bad enough to surprise Raymond with your be¬ 
ing here, you yourself. Go, like a good girl, 
and get your clothes on, and wash your face. 

Dunbar: (Seconding him eagerly) Do go, 
kiddo! What’s the great idea in making your¬ 
self look—like this? (Touches her glittering 
beaded dress). 

Elsie: (Considers herself in the mirror of 
a vanity-case in her hand) Don’t you get the 
“great idea” Joey? (Suddenly to both of 
them) Will you two kindly leave Bill, my 
clothes and my—great ideas (laughs) to me? 

Cosgrieve stares at her unbelievingly, bows 
with a faint smile and turns, as if hopeless, 
back to Dunbar . 


182 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Dunbar: Really, Elsie, you’ve lost your 
head. 

Elsie: You’d be sure to see it that way, 
Joey. 

Cosgrieve, with an air of frankly having 
more than enough, rises. Dunbar, quite upset 
and puzzled, rises. Elsie looks out at the 
garden, fans herself indolently. 

Cosgrieve: Come outside, Dunbar. I hear 
Raymond—I don’t care to be here. 

The two men exit to the garden y go to the 
terrace smoking, walking slowly. Through 
next scene they can be seen from time to time, 
walking, walking, up and down under the til - 
leuls. 


SCENE SIX 

Alone, Elsie rises and hurries to mirror and 
peers at her reflection among all the lighted 
candles. The door opens, the old servant’s 
black sleeve, touch of white cuff and his old 
hand upon the silver-lustre door-knob showing 
a moment. A big shadow enters, the door 
closes, and in the mirror Elsie sees Raymond 
standing, in his boots and grey flannels, against 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 183 


the pale grey door. She turns, arms upon the 
mantelshelf. Raymond sees her. She laughs. 
He is petrified. Elsie picks up her great blue 
feather fan and vanity things, and moving the 
fan lightly, looks Raymond over. 

Elsie: Good heavens, Bill, I wish Mama 
could see you. You might as well be back in the 
little old States.—What’s all this old stuff over 
here doing for you—in your flannels and boots, 
at ten o’clock in the evening? Ugh! Can’t you 
get over it? 

Raymond chokes, jerks his collar, can 9 1 find 
his words. 

Elsie: (Laughs at him—laughs loud, with 
her painted mouth open. Sits with her knees 
perilously crossed, fanning herself) I say, Bill, 
sit down, can 9 1 you? 

Raymond shudders, moves a step closer, 
peering at her unbelievingly. He comes still 
nearer, bends over her as if the dusk baffled 
him, as if he 9 d lost himself, his reason. Elsie, 
her fan against her mouth, peers back. It is a 
moment of edges, close to chaos. Raymond 
retreats. 

Elsie: Gee whiz, what’s the use of all this 
play-acting, Bill? All I want is to know if you’d 


184 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


like a divorce? Do you, Bill—want a divorce, 
I mean? (wistfully, in spite of herself). 

Raymond: (Unsteadily) Divorce? I don’t 
know. Eve never thought about it. Perhaps. 
Our paths seem to have divided— 

Elsie: Ye’p—they’ve divided all-right, all- 
right. I never thought you’d be the one to go 
to the bad. 

Raymond: (Furiously) Bad? Damn it, 
you! You don’t know what bad means. 

Elsie: Thanks awfully, (laughs) You pre¬ 
cious old dub—you blessed hick! Bill, you are 
a sight. You don’t know how to have a good 
time, do you? Never did. You ought to do as 
I do. You know what they call me? Guess, 
Bill! (She doubles over laughing, and showing 
her shoulders alarmingly) The men I know, I 
mean. (Waves her fan towards the terrace 
where the two men can be seen, mere shadows, 
walking). 

Raymond: (Savagely) What do they call 
you? 

Elsie: (Watching him, absorbing him and 
his ready indignation, lets her eyes droop an 
instant. Then, laughing again) Why they call 
me The Hairpin Duchess! Some title, eh? 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 185 


Raymond gasps, his face white and set. He 
watches the two men walking up and down, his 
fists unconsciously clenched. She laughs again. 
His hands relax and he hangs his head in shame 
of her. 

Elsie: Can you blame ’em? I don’t. Of 
course they don’t know that I know they call 
me that. They’d have fits if they knew I knew. 
They’re awfully kind. Nice fellows, eh? I’m 
sort of gone on Cosgrieve. I overheard ’em 
one night when we were dining at a n’other 
fellow’s apartment. Cute place, he had. And, 
some cook! Gee, what a feed, Bill! It was a 
night after the races. I heard one of ’em who 
is a n’author call me it—and they all laughed 
like one o’clock. So did I—laugh, I mean. 
The Hairpin Duchess, eh? Well, somebody’s 
got to keep up the little old Duke-and-Duchess 
game, eh? It’s a step up from being guyed 
about my hairpin money, anyhow. (Laughs) 
Good night, Bill, cheer-up ! Somebody’s got to 
make hairpins. You act as sensitive as Mama! 

Raymond: (Whispers) Oh—God! 

Elsie: (Stares at him) Gee whiz, I don’t 
care. What’s it to me? The main thing is that 
I’ve got the dough to play the part with. Let 


186 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

’em call me what they darn well please, so long 
as they dance to my tune. What’s money for? 
Tell me that? (Suddenly) I’ll get a divorce 
right away. I came down to tell you Bill. I 
want to play fair. Then you get married to 
that little sketch of yours, eh ? Much safer, and 
less trouble. You, with your Sunday-school past 
—you must worry like the dickens about your¬ 
self and her? I’ll get it fixed up as quick as I 
can. It’s as easy over here now, as at Reno! 
Money certainly can make ’bout anything jazz, 
even law-an’-order. Of course you’ve got to act 
as if you never heard of money, and look the 
other way! (Laughs and fans) That’s the 
French of it, eh? 

Raymond rushes away from her y the crash 
of glass as he flings the door to behind him 
fairly shocking the still night and halting the 
two men, walking on the terrace, as if they had 
been struck. Without looking back, Raymond 
stalks down the garden path and disappears. 
The garden gate slams in the stillness. Cos - 
grieve and Dunbar come running. Cosgrieve 
pushes the broken glass aside on the steps, and 
comes into the room, followed by Dunbar. 
Elsie is sitting straight in her chair her fan and 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 187 


vanity-case on the floor, staring fixedly at the 
door . They stand before her, trying to under¬ 
stand her. She looks up at them, her eyes 
heavy with fatigue and paint. She rises, steps 
carefully across her fan, goes unevenly to the 
mirror, the lights. She looks at herself, her 
hands gripping the shelf. She looks down at 
her hands. She gives a choked sound, pulls off 
her rings, her bracelets, all her jewels. She 
takes her handkerchief and wipes off the worst 
of the paint. She turns, leaning there before 
the lights, her lovely hair bright about her face, 
her face pearly in the shadow against the light. 
She glances at Dunbar with a wavering smile, 
then looks fully at Cosgrieve. 

Elsie: You aren’t to think, you two, that I 
got myself up like this to be—funny! Nor to 
please myself, or Bill. I—just did it, you see, to 
cure Bill of any hangover pipe-dream he might 
have had about me. He’s cured! I’m sorry 
about the broken glass. Jo—on my bed upstairs 
is a sweater. ’Mind getting it for me? Don’t 
ring for a maid, please, Cosgrieve! I’ve acted 
enough, for one night! 

Exit Dunbar, hastily. Cosgrieve stands by 
the broken door, looking into the garden . 


188 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Elsie stands very still, looking at Cos grieve. 
Her mouth quivers. She bites her lip, gets 
hold of herself, lifts her head. 

Elsie: Cosgrieve, will you do something for 
me? 

Dunbar enters, sweater in hands, and goes to 
Elsie, holding it for her. 

Elsie: (Slipping her arms into sweater) Jo, 
will you, and Cosgrieve, do something for me? 

Dunbar: Give us a chance, kiddo! 

Elsie: (Sighs) I like to be called “kiddo.” 
(Looks at Cosgrieve a moment, then with her 
head high) Will you two just wipe up the earth 
with the next person who calls me a Hairpin 
Duchess ? Because—it hurts my feelings—to be 
called that— 

The two men, wholly confused, look at one 
another. Elsie fastens her sweater, drops all 
her jewels into her handkerchief, and that into 
her jersey pocket, then, bravely, as if nothing 
had happened she lights a cigarette at one of 
the candles, and goes toward the door. 

Elsie: Come on outside? Let’s have a smoke 
in the fresh air! God bless a dark night and 
fresh air I 


THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 189 


She laughs over her shoulder. She goes out 
into the garden, the two men following her, 
holding one another by the arm, looking at her 
whom they have hurt for the good of her soul. 


XIII 

THINKING OF PAPA 

It was Cosgrieve’s party, “up the hill,” at a 
happy Montmartre haunt. If haunts are happy. 
Good things to eat, champagne, jazz, gay wise 
eyes, and confetti. Cosgrieve, since Elsie’s 
meeting with Raymond, had not seemed to be 
able to do enough for her. He liked her, 
frankly. He seemed to have come out into the 
open, recklessly, under his circumstances, where 
before he’d been afraid of her possible reck¬ 
lessness. 

Elsie, with something new in her effect, and 
very lovely in brown and silver tulle, with 
shoulders like velvet, her eyes hard and made 
up, her voice as hard and perhaps as made up, 
sat between Cosgrieve and Dunbar, with Sey¬ 
mour and Nelson opposite them. A week had 
190 


THINKING OF PAPA 


191 


gone by since she had seen Bill Raymond. Be¬ 
fore she saw him, she had talked of nothing 
else, and talked a great deal. Since, she had 
been all but silent. She said she was “growing 
a shell.” She’d refused to do things, and often 
dined alone. Then Cosgrieve phoned instantly, 
talked a great deal. Since, she had been all 
but silent. She said she was “growing a shell.” 
She’d refused to do things, and often dined 
alone. Then Cosgrieve phoned instantly. 
“You are no good, Elsie, as a nun. Tonight 
you are coming just where I say, and you are 
going to have a wonderful party and a good 
time. Ask anyone—as many as you like—only, 
tell me how many, so I may get the party 
going.” 

In a moment Elsie made up her mind, her 
new-grown mind. It was as good a way as 
another of saying good-bye to them. If she 
could count upon herself to go through with 
it? She stood staring at herself in a mirror 
with the telephone in her hand. “You are a 
perfect dear,” she told him, beginning absently. 
“There will be four of us, and you.” 

^“Four of you and me? I like that!” Cos¬ 
grieve laughed. “I’m a dear, of course, but not 


192 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


as perfect as all that. Who am I to talk with, 
to dance with? Who’ll be there to dine with 
me?” 

“Oh, I’ll be there, you know,” she answered. 

She arrived at the hour, with her three—Sey¬ 
mour, Dunbar and Nelson—to Cosgrieve’s 
great amusement. The dinner began gaily, the 
young men all with a great deal to say to one 
another. Nelson was about Cosgrieve’s age, 
and they had not met before. Elsie smoked 
while they talked; looked over the place, catch¬ 
ing, holding, throwing off glances of all sorts 
of admiring eyes, indifferently. The four young 
men tried to interest her, but she seemed vague, 
contented to listen. Clever, keen, young, they 
interested one another, and they forgot her and 
let her be. She became merely their brown and 
silver bibelot, with her glass well filled, and of 
course protected. Perfectly protected. They 
were there. And while they talked eagerly of 
oil-fields, Elsie smiled at a solitary Englishman 
—an on-looker too, without even the appear¬ 
ance of companions. “Funny as an iceberg,” 
thought Elsie, amusing herself. He was im¬ 
mensely good-looking, her Englishman, and 
tall. With evidence of shock, of fine distress, 


THINKING OF PAPA 


193 


he returned her disconcerting American smile. 
Then he carefully looked over her men. Poor 
Elsie. The men were all right. It was Elsie 
he found, not wanting, but—. His next smile 
was neither shocked nor distressed. Elsie 
stiffened and sat closer to her table, to her men, 
her protectors. She could not seem to play the 
game, any game. She wished she hadn’t smiled 
at the silly man. A man who couldn’t under¬ 
stand a smile! 

‘‘Penny for your thoughts, old dear,” said 
Dunbar. 

“Not enough, Joey. I wasn’t thinking of 
you, so it would be too much, wouldn’t it?— 
a whole penny?” 

“Your highness is somewhat edgy tonight?” 
Nelson suggested, looking gaily into her eyes. 

Elsie had not seen Nelson since her dinner 
with him at the Rotonde, when he’d unforgiv¬ 
ably sent her home alone in a taxi at half-past 
nine o’clock. She knew nothing of his visit to 
Judith Ardley, or that he’d plans for her. “Oh 
no,” she looked away from his glance. “Not as 
bright as all that. I’m just bored.” 

Cosgrieve sat up and looked at her curiously. 
“Will you dance?” he asked her, standing by 


194 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


her chair, dodging confetti from a slim, 
jewelled hand at a table near by. 

“Thanks. ’Love to.” 

They danced, eyes following them. All sorts 
of eyes for as many sorts of reasons. Men’s 
and women’s eyes; critical, jealous, admiring 
eyes. 

“When will you dine with me alone, Elsie?” 
Cosgrieve asked her. 

Over his shoulder she saw the Englishman’s 
cold, covetous eyes following them. Cosgrieve 
was startled by a very simple sigh. 

“Something gone wrong again, Elsie?” he 
insisted. 

She looked him full in the eyes. “I thought 
that everybody knew that everything had gone 
wrong,” she answered him. 

Back at their table Dunbar said, close to her 
ear, “You dance wonderfully well, old dear. 
My turn next?” 

“Too wonderfully, Joey, thanks,” she moved 
her chair away from him a little, scarcely more 
than a gesture, but eloquently. 

The others laughed. Elsie looked them over, 
one after another. They were drinking too 
much; even Nelson was drinking more than 


THINKING OF PAPA 


195 


usual. The place was suffocating, the air tor¬ 
tured with paper ribbons and confetti. The 
Englishman was becoming very pink, was drink¬ 
ing too, and staring at her absorbantly with his 
round pelican eyes. 

“I say, old dear, who’s your friend?” 
chuckled Dunbar. 

“Joey, if you call me “old dear” once more, 
I’ll go over and dine with him. That’s who he 
is!” she told Dunbar. She met Cosgrieve’s 
surprised glance, considered the fuddled indig¬ 
nation upon their four flushed faces. She 
laughed at them. “He would at least give me 
his undivided attention. That’s also who he 
is.” 

“My dear child,” murmured Nelson. “What 
a pristine plaint l” 

Elsie looked back at him. Drink was not 
improving him. He looked less fine. “Pris¬ 
tine? I don’t know what you mean. I can’t 
talk in words of more than one syllable, you 
know. Not yet!” 

“If,” Nelson went on, “there is one thing 
that irritates a modern woman more than an¬ 
other, it is a man’s undivided attention.” 

“Well,” said Elsie, “I guess they won’t many 


196 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


of ’em die of irritation then.” She smoked, and 
she twirled her fingers making the smoke spiral 
and ruffle. “I’m going home,” she said sud¬ 
denly. 

They stared at her, astounded into sobriety. 

“But it’s early, Kiddo dear!” wailed Dunbar, 
who’d come across a pair of bright brown eyes 
that seemed to be seeking his undivided 
attention. 

Elsie looked from one to the other, amazed, 
then she laughed. “Goodnight! I don’t mean 
now, tonight, to my hotel. That’s not home! 
I mean) next Saturday, on the “Paris.” ‘Back 
to the farm’ stuff.” 

“But why? Why? Why? Why?” they cho¬ 
rused, bending to her. 

“Oh,” she said, “to pack up over there, and 
to break away from all of the crazy-ness-ness 
over here.” 

They became momentarily quite sober. Nel¬ 
son especially was clear, his curious look of 
light glistening upon his face. “What—after 
that?” he asked her. 

Elsie found her voice, and she had her 
something to say to her now wholly attentive 
audience. She sobered them, dominated them, 


THINKING OF PAPA 


197 


held them, with the mere force of her good 
common sense and her made up mind. She 
owned to simple wants and longings. She 
wanted a life worth the trouble; worth the 
outrageous price. She was sick of jazz and 
paper ribbons. She had a divorce started. 
She was free to go home for three or four 
weeks, if she kept a room and an address. 
“Then I’ll have old Bill off my conscience!” 
She used the word ‘conscience’ just as a shower 
of confetti fell on her. She seemed not to see 
or feel the dazzling bits of paper. “Then I’m 
going to fix up a place to live in. My own 
place. My very own. And then,” she said 
with a glance half brave, halt supplicating, for 
Nelson, “I want to study. French, of course, 
and—everything. I—want to know what 
people are talking about. It’s not much fun—” 
this time Cosgrieve got her glance, “being a 
side-show. The biggest-blonde-on-earth sort 
of thing.” 

“Bravo, Elsie,” said Nelson applauding 
softly. He bent forward eagerly, and it was 
a good thing that a little too much to drink had 
melted his usual cynicism, for he let her see for 
once that he was eager and sincere. “It’s what 


198 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


I’ve hoped you’d do. If you’ll let me, I know 
a way to help you. A perfect way.” 

She listened to him, she studied him, she 
laughed softly, uncertainly. “You mean 
thing!” she was suddenly wholly frank. “You 
have helped me. You never let a break of 
mine get by. You’ve made me feel like the 
living image of ‘all dressed up and nowhere to 
go.’ What do you mean now, by a chance? 
A way? I want, awfully, to have a good time 
some day, but I don’t care about being burned 
at the stake to get it. What are you driving 
at? What,” she laughed gaily, “is the awful 
price?” 

Then Nelson told her about Judith Ardley. 
He had written Judith that he wasn’t sure 
about the dinner at her place as the best way to 
begin. He’d promised to let her know, to come 
again after he’d seen Elsie, and had talked over 
a plan. 

Said Cosgrieve, “But I’ve met Mrs. Ardley! 
When my sisters were over for flub-dubs, be¬ 
fore they got married. My mother knew her, 
and put the kids in her care. I met her once or 
twice after, during the war, and since her son 
was killed, we’ve been good friends. She’s 


THINKING OF PAPA 


199 


charming. It’s a great idea!” Cosgrieve, the 
American, was all alive with new interest, for 
he suddenly visioned Elsie as something to 
build over, to reconstruct. 

“She sounds pretty wonderful,” sighed Elsie, 
“but I hate to think what she will think of me.” 

“She’ll like you,” said Nelson quietly. 

“You’re suffering from fixed ideas, kiddo,” 
said Dunbar. “Can’t you get it through your 
little shell-pink ears that we all love you for 
yourself?” Dunbar was very fuddled. 

“I know just as well as I care to just how 
you ‘love’ me, Jo Dunbar.” She looked him 
full in the eyes. “I know that if you and I 
were to meet in our home town, I’d see just 
about as much of you as I used to.” 

Dunbar seemed unable to think of an answer. 
The other three sat back, looking at Dunbar 
gravely, examining each one of them, his own 
mind. Elsie smiled, watching them, but stuck 
to her point, for all that it turned back and 
struck herself. 

“Look here now, kiddo,” Dunbar began, 
“You know you aren’t fair—” 

“Better let it go at that, Jo,” said Elsie. 

Nelson laughed. “You are perfectly right, 


200 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Elsie. Every man-jack of us, as you like to put 
it, is looking for a chance to isolate you. You 
are wonderfully handsome. We like to show 
you off. We’re strutting cocks, and selfish all 
through. Everyone of us.” 

“Not very high-brow, is it?” she commented. 
“That’s all fun, but it’s not good enough. 
No’p.” Her painted mouth closed firmly, and 
she stared at her hands, and the careening 
smoke of her cigarette. “I’m going to train. 
I’m going to be trimmed. I’m going to get 
onto that game till even you, Richmond Nelson, 
won’t be able to catch me in any of your darned 
little traps.” 

Nelson knew better than to set up any de¬ 
fence. “You’ll do it, if you really care to. 
Your sense of self-preservation is quite as 
handsome as your shoulders, if not so entirely 
visible. But Judith Ardley is no trap-setter. 
She is your opportunity, Elsie. She’s not going 
to brutally want to trim you. She’ll make you 
happy. And you are equally her opportunity. 
You start neck and neck.” 

Nelson sketched Judith for her. Young, 
beautiful, rich, and married adventurously to 
a spendthrift musician who had, even so, made 


THINKING OF PAPA 


201 


her, after a manner, happy. He had died, leav¬ 
ing her a reduced income and a son. Mondaine, 
and at once fine in her courage, she’d shopped 
professionally to patch the holes in her for¬ 
tunes, to give her son all that he should have. 
The son had been killed in the first year of the 
war. The war had reduced her already small 
income. At fifty and a little more, she was 
obliged to keep it up. And she’d keep it up, 
splendidly, conscientiously, and without com¬ 
plaining. 

“That sounds good,” said Elsie sensibly. 
After thinking a moment, she looked at Nelson. 
“But tell me facts.” She bent toward him, her 
beautiful hands clasped before her, as if she’d 
force him to simple frankness. “I mean, how 
does she do the shopping? What can she do 
with me? She can’t shop me, can she? I’m 
already pretty darned well shopped, it seems 
to me. When I get the blues, I always feel 
dead, like a wax woman in a shop window. 
What under the sun can I be to her? Tell me 
that!” 

Nelson returned her eagerness. “You’ll 
be superb as a team, once she’s given you your 
pace, Elsie,” he laughed. “You’ll have a good 


202 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


time together. She’s much more beautiful than 
you are, for all that she’s fifty.” 

A smile spread over Elsie’s face, really gay. 
“Well, I like that!” She looked at Nelson 
curiously. He seemed, for the first time, quite 
young to her. 

“That’s that,” said Nelson. “You’ve got 
the same racy nerve, but at present she’s got all 
the meaning. But Elsie, she’s had to work like 
a slave and look like a care-free idler. And 
she’s tired. It’s beginning to tell, to worry 
her. It isn’t going to be easier, for she’s get¬ 
ting older.” 

“Good night,” murmured Elsie, “the poor 
dear!” 

“Not at all,” said Nelson. “She’ll go 
through with that smile of hers, even if you do 
not cross her path—cross it, you know, with 
some of your comforting gold. And very few 
will ever know that she is tired.” 

Elsie gestured helplessly. “Please get down 
to brass tacks. What am I to do about it? 
Give her so much a year to buy my clothes? 
To make me look like one of those portraits 
you are so crazy about—those women in dotted 
swiss, at the show you took me to.” 


THINKING OF PAPA 


203 


Nelson, the others imitating him, bent to¬ 
ward Elsie, closer. “Take her with you. 
Travel, Elsie! Go to Italy, Egypt, wherever 
you like. Live with her; eat, talk, read with 
her. Let her guide you in your clothes, your 
friends. Make her your friend. Let her know 
you. You’ll keep her young. She’ll teach you 
to grow up. Then you can come back here and 
have that apartment you are always talking 
about. You’ll have a wonderful time together. 
Will you let me bring you together?” 

Elsie sat looking past them, past the patient¬ 
ly, carefully ogling Englishman, a strange some¬ 
thing like light that they had never caught upon 
her face before. 

“Now what is it?” Cosgrieve asked her. 
“You aren’t to let Nelson bully you into any¬ 
thing you don’t want to do. You are very nice 
as you are, you know.” 

Elsie laughed softly and got out a lacey 
handkerchief and dabbed her eyes, making a 
little fun of herself. “I was just—thinkin’ of 
Papa,” she told them. 

Not a voice answered her till, ardently, Jo 
Dunbar came forth from his mists with “By 
Jove, Kiddo, you are a peach!” 


204 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


Elsie held herself. When she spoke again 
her voice was hard. It simply had to be hard 
to be at all. “Mrs. Ardley sounds like a per¬ 
fectly good proposition. If we—hit it off, I’ll 
make her an offer. Write down her address,” 
she handed Nelson her little gold and ivory 
tablet, “and I’ll go right out to see her. I’ll 
go tomorrow,” she smiled. 

Nelson wrote, smiling to himself over their 
subterfuge—their camouflaged dinner. Elsie 
swept the nonsense aside with her splendid 
common-sense. “I’ll go right out and see her.” 

“Brrrrrrrrrrrr,” shivered Elsie, the tablet 
back in her bag. “We are being solemn for a 
place like this! Anybody’d think we were sign¬ 
ing a treaty. Little me, and you four Turks! 
I do wish—” she smiled at Cosgrieve, “that 
somebody’d ask me to dance—” 

Elsie and Cosgrieve danced into the confetti- 
spangled throng the three other young men 
watching them. 

“Give her two years of Judith Ardley and 
she will pity you y Dunbar,” said Nelson. “If 
you want to stay on the band-wagon you’ll have 
to change your tune.” 


THINKING OF PAPA 205 

“And you—?” Dunbar flushed, grinning but 
nettled. 

“I? Oh I shall stick around and listen to 
the music,” Nelson smiled. “I’m not, you 
know, acquisitive.” 


XIV 

REMEMBER 

Elsie sailed. She left Paris, her arms full 
of flowers, her four friends and Judith Ardley 
waving her away. Small and precious they 
looked to her in the filtered light of the train- 
sheds, as the train moved out, unrolling space 
between them. She’d been over only a few 
weeks and it seemed an eternity. All there 
was of reality for her. Her divorce was 
launched. “I’m going home,” she’d told Nelson 
gaily, “to bury my turquoise blue past.” Then 
she was coming back again; back to Judith 
Ardley. “I’m twice her size,” Elsie’d told her 
friends after meeting Judith, “but I’m going 
to be her perfectly good little shadow. She’s 
simply sweet I” And they were fading from 
her, mere silhouettes now; Judith and the four 
206 


REMEMBER 


207 


of them. Nelson and Cosgrieve, Seymour and 
Jo Dunbar. And Nelson, just at the last, 
moved forward and waved his hat, and Elsie 
answered with her hand. Then she sat in her 
corner and cried a little into Cosgrieve’s or¬ 
chids. The five went their ways of course, life 
going on for them as it always had, and would. 
But Elsie had brought them so oddly close to¬ 
gether. And Judith was greatly amused over 
the constant solicitations they all “invested” in 
her. “Really,” she said, as she got into Cos¬ 
grieve’s car to leave the station, “I feel as if 
losing her, we’d lost our balance!” 

Then a shocking thing happened. It was 
all over in a few days after Elsie sailed. Nel¬ 
son died. 

He sold a short story for a good price; was 
gay about it, and, to celebrate, took Judith to 
the Grand Prix. Cosgrieve begged to go with 
them, took them in his car, Nelson permitted 
the fun of paying the entries. The afternoon 
was radiant, the turf like emerald, the clothes 
magnificent. Judith, friends about her, was 
delightful, exquisite. They won and lost, lost 
and won, gaily. Nelson made a scoop, was 
very gay about it—had liked the color of the 


208 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


jockey’s hair, or something equally inessential, 
and he’d won, the others losing. It was not a 
day of favourites, and color heightened rouge, 
and eyes shone with the gambler’s haphazard 
brilliance. The day was beautiful. The man¬ 
nikins strutted—lovely I One beautiful crea¬ 
ture, tall and slight, crisply-curled black short 
hair, and a skin like golden satin, paced the 
place in orange taffeta—tight of bodice, sleeve¬ 
less, gloveless, fringed ruffles of the soft stuff 
sweeping the green, and to keep off the sun, in 
place of a hat, she carried, delightfully, a little 
black parasol. With her there minced along 
a marvelous young man in top-hat and tight- 
waisted clothes. Judith, enchanted, turned to 
Nelson to be sure he had seen them—the 
golden beauty and her doll-like man. She 
gasped, and caught at his sleeve. “What is it? 
Net’ you are ill?” He was pale as the death 
that was already dogging him. 

Baffled, he peered back at her. “I don’t 
know what it is. The air’s soggy isn’t it? I’m 
cold.” 

“It’s not soggy, not cold at all. Come at 
once—” She rose, Cosgrieve beside her. 

“You don’t mind going? You—Cosgrieve? 


REMEMBER 209 

We could get a taxi—” His teeth were chat¬ 
tering. 

For answer Cosgrieve took his arm. They 
hurried him out, Nelson’s pallor making its 
moment of flurry. A bad loser, the crowd 
probably thought him, and then forgot all 
about him. 

Nelson, shivering and cold, crouched in the 
back of Cosgrieve’s luxurious car, neither ask¬ 
ing help nor resenting it. Judith put her wrap 
over his knees, sat close to him, watched him. 
Nelson seemed oblivious. They took him to 
Judith’s apartment. She put him to bed in her 
son’s room while Cosgrieve went for the 
doctor. 

Judith, alone with him, bent down and 
stroked his hair. He looked up and his eyes 
filled with tears. “I’ve got a perfectly ghastly 
pain,” he confessed. “No—not the old wound 
at all. My shoulders, my back—” and he 
fainted. 

In the morning they took him to a nursing- 
home, Cosgrieve arranging everything, ignor¬ 
ing any protest in Nelson’s sometimes conscious 
eyes. To end the protest he bent down and 
put a hand on Nelson’s hand a moment. “Give 


210 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


me the happiness of feeling good for some¬ 
thing, Nelson.” And Nelson’s eyes closed 
with the faint shadow of a smile, consenting, 
grateful. In a short time they’d become good 
friends, Nelson and Cosgrieve. 

Cosgrieve, Judith and a nurse rode with him, 
in the great cradle-like ambulance. Nelson, 
from his pillow, his eyes vivid from the flare 
up of strength to meet the emergency, looked 
out on the green of trees and sward, and the 
blue and silver of summer sky. Sharply he 
closed it all out again. “It is a lovely day,” 
said Judith softly. “Too lovely,” he answered, 
and for the rest of the way he lay very very 
still, his hand in hers. 

He made a good fight, but his old wounds 
had weakened him, and pneumonia is a bad 
enemy. He had his whimsical moments, his 
difficult moments, but he was generally patient 
under pain, and obedient. They did their best 
to help him, to save him. They held to him 
right up to the great door of his night, where 
the cruel breathlessness ceased and he finally 
lost himself in peace. 

A few hours before he died he had a good 
clear hour. He asked to speak with Judith. 


REMEMBER 


211 


The nurse obliterated herself in the deep win¬ 
dow. “I’m done for,” he told her. “I know. I 
don’t seem to mind very much. I’d like to have 
written a few things well. But, even that isn’t 
important. All of my papers are yours, Judith. 
The book is finished—queer how I got through 
with it so easily? The Marie-Lou book. Just 
let my people know the simple facts. I’ve very 
few people, very few facts. And,” he smiled, 
“there’s Elsie. She will feel very badly.” He 
hesitated, then a little grimly, “On the table in 
my studio is a manuscript—a fool-thing called 
Men’s Rights. It’s not for publication. It’s 
for Elsie. Will you give it to her? And Judith, 
—give her a chance. I want Elsie to win. And 
Judith, thanks for being so very good to me. 
You are precious. I’ll always be thanking you.” 
His voice all but faded and the poor breathing 
became difficult again. The nurse came to the 
bed, shook her head with a smile for Judith, 
who rose. Nelson read the smile, but reached 
his hand out to Judith. It was a pale hand— 
a dry thing, a leaf ready to fall. She held it 
between her own. His thoughts had held to 
their thread across the difficult moment. “Al¬ 
ways be thanking you,” he repeated. Then he 


212 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


smiled. That smile of his, like a light upon his 
face. A glistening light. “I don’t mean—any 
—ghost-stuff. I only mean—you’ll remember. 
Always, Judith dear. It’s remembering that 
makes an eternity—” 


XV 

MEN’S RIGHTS 

(The manuscript letter that Richmond ♦ Nelson asked 
Judith to give to Elsie) 

Elsie, my dear, you are a disturbing person. 
You are too beautiful. Sometimes too imper¬ 
fectly beautiful to be endurable. And how 
your beautiful imperfections reek of promises! 
It terrifies me to think of what you may become, 
for good or for evil. There is so much of good 
about you that you lead me, even hard-shelled 
me, to think in platitudes. You go about re¬ 
ducing men to “good dogs” by the mere beau¬ 
tiful abundance of your goodness. Just what 
you may become—? Elsie, Elsie! As you are 
now, you have reduced four of us. Five, count¬ 
ing your Bill Raymond. The four of us, as 
213 


214 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

young men go, know our way fairly well. Bill, 
I deeply suspect, (so deeply that I sometimes 
succeed in forgetting him) is the only one of 
us that very much matters to you. You have 
drawn the rest of us together—fairly knotted 
us together with your superb, your lovable 
clumsiness. We have fallen very low in our 
maudlin desire to help you. Ridiculous! You 
are going, as sure as fate, to rise above us, to 
help yourself! You have made us eye one an¬ 
other, resent one another, deceive one another: 
men who have lived through the war together! 
We have secretly schemed ways of isolating 
you, each one for himself. And we’ve been 
very solemn about it, and pretentious, but really 
not at all to be good to you, but wholly to be 
good to ourselves. It makes something rather 
fine of a mere young man, going about with a 
splendid creature like you, my dear. Tonight, 
I’ve been walking down by the river, the pat¬ 
tern of leaves between me and the moon, and 
with the pattern of the leaves to go by, I’ve 
been thinking you in and out of the rather 
detached, and often lonely pattern of our four 
lives. For all our chatter, we are living over 
here in an exile, which, for all that it is vol- 


MEN’S RIGHTS 


215 


untary, is no less detached. I’ve tried to be 
dispassionate about it. It is not easy to be dis¬ 
passionate about you, Elsie. 

There’s Seymour first. I don’t know why 
first, except that he is a clean-cut type with his 
way all laid out for him. He’d marry you, 
gobble you. He would, Elsie. You’d have a 
correct home in a correct quarter. He’d go 
daily to his bank with a clear, accepting, cap¬ 
able, and wholly credulous mind. He is world¬ 
ly-wise enough to run well even the gilded and 
wholly correct life that, together, you would 
lead. But his wisdom ends there. He’d take 
you as you are without a dream of what you 
might have been. You’d have splendid motor¬ 
cars, children, an English nurse. And you’d 
accept it all in spite of yourself. You’d be 
handsome and stout—no, no, Seymour is not 
to matter for you. He must not. It is impos¬ 
sible to think of—a hopeless pattern, accepted 
by hopeless people. People who do not know 
enough to suffer, to re-arrange, to hope, to go 
against a fashion. Somewhere there is a girl 
of Seymour’s own sort. Let them find one an¬ 
other. Give him to her, Elsie. You can afford 
to I The woman he marries will have every- 


216 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

thing. And you, if you are to reach the last 
fine lines of your pattern, have got to have 
all but everything taken away from you. What 
I’m driving at about you and Seymour is that 
his is an official mind, and conventional. He’d 
place you by his side. And fully he’d expect 
you to stay there, radiant, but in the narrow 
way. No room for the beautiful creature you 
may be with air and light and freedom. May 
fate, or heaven, or even hell, save you, dear 
splendid, golden child, from any official keep¬ 
ing. From Seymour! 

As for Dunbar, you could send him to ruin 
with a lift of your hand. And a revenge it 
would be for all the differences of your two 
home backgrounds. You’d be victims of the 
contempt of familiarity. A perilous beginning. 
Jo, with his snobbish provincial family, and you 
with your hairpins and your new money. You’d 
have all that, like stones up your sleeves, to fling 
at one another. Jo loves you just now, what¬ 
ever that means. He burbles along beside you, 
gay and quite sweet, but he hasn’t the slightest 
effect upon you. You probably saw through 
him in the light of your social differences when 
you were just a little girl, and little girls like 


MEN’S RIGHTS 


217 


you (with long gold pig-tails) see with fatal 
clarity, and I think you do not forget. You’d 
never arrive at a feeling larger than tolerance 
for Jo, though you could enslave him. You’d 
either toss him about like so much gay confetti, 
use him as a good-looking upper servant to 
carry your gorgeous furs, or you’d teach him 
to stay back, to follow like a pet dog that knows 
better than to be a nuisance. Jo wouldn’t be 
long about his demoralizing. He’d become a 
mere appetite running after you. He’d spend 
all that he has, and a lot of what you have, on 
orchids and bracelets, and not all for you either. 
He’d go mad, a Pierrot. He’s a sweet chap, 
Dunbar, but not much of a pattern. Not for 
you, Elsie dear. 

And Cosgrieve. I’m afraid to look too 
closely at you and Cosgrieve. It hurts me to 
see you together. He might be so very much 
to you. You are very beautiful together—very 
right. He dominates you, is your physical 
equal. He has more money than you have. 
You could look up to Cosgrieve. But child, 
even now, while you are so desirable to him— 
because you are putting him off, even now when 
he takes you out to dine he is careful of you, 


218 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


keeps your glass filled, looks after your perfect 
comfort, but he turns to talk with us, with men. 
He has his shrewd American interest in large 
affairs. He plays his money over the earth’s 
commerce, a big game. And if a woman were 
to come along who knew how to talk of politics, 
of diplomacy, of oil-fields, he’d turn away from 
you to talk with her. As you are now, you and 
Cosgrieve,. things are dangerous, and ripe for 
escapade, but less dangerous than if your two 
lives were free for some fatal venture. If you 
were free to, you’d marry. Now, you would. 
You are not used to interference. You’d marry, 
if for no other reason than because it’s the 
easiest way. And you may easily both become 
free. I can see you, in a train de luxe, rushing 
South, South! Gorgeous word, South! A 
gorgeous hotel, a suite of rooms, flowers, every¬ 
thing, all brought to vivid life by you. But that 
would pall upon Cosgrieve in a week. In heav¬ 
en’s name believe me that it would. (Where 
is Cosgrieve’s wife, Elsie? and what is the 
trouble?) And if she, that other clever wom¬ 
an, came along he’d turn to her. And you, un¬ 
wise child, who on earth would you meet, to 
compensate? A Jo Dunbar? The waste of it 


MEN’S RIGHTS 


219 


is unthinkable. The sadness of it. You’d be 
snubbed by Cosgrieve’s clever friends and, 
sooner or later, ignored by Cosgrieve. You’d 
make the best of it. Scenes, because you’re 
frank and terribly truthful. Then you’d be 
bored. You’d be splendid-looking together, 
but satiated, airless. A second divorce—? 
That’s not good enough for either of you— 
unthinkable even. I like Cosgrieve better than 
any American man I have ever met. We have 
an infinite capacity for friendship. And you 
and Cosgrieve are very much alike. Your dif¬ 
ference is that tragic one, opportunity. And 
there’s something terrible and sinful in the 
strength of his laughing ease and upholstered 
capabilities. To me they are, finally, forbid¬ 
ding. And I know that from his height he 
misses many things. Things that are sweet— 
like leaves, and the soothing beauty of their 
patterns in infinite and simple repetition. I 
don’t see what you can be to Cosgrieve, Elsie, 
except a fling. That, if you will, heaven guard 
you! But flings won’t keep you beautiful. 

Elimination is bringing us home, Elsie, dear. 
Raymond is left, and I am left. And we two 
have not met. Dunbar has told me of him, and 


220 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 


so has Cosgrieve. Instinct tells me a great deal 
more. You, and instinct. Among the leaves, 
a beautiful tree in mid-summer, a vision of you 
and Raymond. I don’t resent Raymond, and 
I do, profoundly resent the others. I like 
visioning you and Raymond meeting by chance, 
two or three years from now, when life is less 
difficult perhaps, and you have had all of that 
time with Judith Ardley. I see you— so clear¬ 
ly, Elsie!—A beautiful person, awakened and 
quieted. I can fancy you and Judith, perhaps 
at a theatre, in your loge, gay together and 
exquisitely dressed. It is a happy-go-lucky 
comedy that draws men alone, like Raymond. 
And women alone, like you and Judith. Ray¬ 
mond sees you—for the first time since that 
tragic comedy of your own at Cosgrieve’s place. 
He sees you and Judith—friends dropping into 
your loge, or leaning upon the velvet rail to 
chat with you. You have learned how to chat. 
Judith’s friends are your friends. You look 
happy, and you do not talk too much. I see 
Raymond, bewildered, hypnotized, make his 
careful way round to some shadow where he 
can see you, watch you, hear you. I see him 
get out of the place—rush out into the night 


MEN’S RIGHTS 


221 


like a suffocating young god, back to the stars 
fcfi* light and belief. Then he gives in to his 
mortal chains. I’ve something of the boy’s 
pet giant in my picture of Raymond: a young 
and very good giant in chains. I can vision 
what he’d do. He’d follow your beautiful car 
home in a careening taxi, and he’d stand half 
the night watching windows for a sight of you. 
Then one day after your luncheon with Judith, 
(I do so love thinking of you two together!) 
you’d have a letter from Bill. I can’t open his 
letter, of course! but he tells you, among other 
things, that the girl long ago ran away with 
one of Cosgrieve’s chauffeurs. That he’s glad 
that she did. He tells you that he’s lonesome, 
and never did know how to take care of him¬ 
self. And you, Elsie dear, what then would you 
do with Raymond? What would Judith want 
you to do with him? I almost know. And it is 
so right that it convinces me, almost against my 
will, Elsie. Almost. There’s night air stirring 
in the leaves. The pattern is blurred. Beau¬ 
tiful night air blurring, the myriad leaves— 
And here am I. I’d like to press my face 
against your hands—your beautiful hands, once 
for me without their rings—so close that at 


222 THE HAIR-PIN DUCHESS 


last you would understand me. I, who do not 
understand myself? There’s shere hope for 
you! I am complicated—two steps ahead and 
then three backward. The thought of ties, 
ruts, of everyday safety, revolts me. There are 
days when your wealth of colour and health are 
loathsome to me, and there are nights, nights 
like this, out under the leaves, when they are 
not. God, how they are not! I know how you 
are good, and that revolts me too, even as I 
tell myself that I am a fool, and unkind to you 
and to myself. What I want of you is all of 
you—but free of you. You are not a woman 
with whom a sensitive man may be free, and I 
am no fool, and I know it. You great, beauti¬ 
ful, warm, strong thing, you want being driven, 
and bullied, and worshipped, and protected, and 
I’d soon hate a woman who drove me to behav¬ 
ing like that sort of a man. That is horrible 
to me. The health and light of all that, and its 
sorts of love. When I was only eighteen, Elsie, 
Judith’s cavorting husband gaily led me into a 
love like that. I did nothing else, thought of 
nothing else. It was the suicide of my youth. 
I don’t want to die like that again. And now, 
forcing myself to confess, to look up to the pat- 


MEN’S RIGHTS 


223 


tern of the leaves again, I see the secret grey- 
threads I’ve shuttled all through the pattern. 
Grey shadow-threads. I’m hoping, as I never 
have hoped for anything in life before, that 
Judith quiets you. Stills and changes you till 
you have become endurable to me. What a 
dream! A fool’s dream, and selfish. Why 
should you, gorgeous and over-abundant Elsie, 
be changed more than I, than another? Do 
what I will about it, I go on insulting you with 
pity. It is insolence, and I know it, but I cannot 
help it. I love you and go on in my idiocy, 
looking down upon you. For I love myself 
better than I love you. But, it makes you turn 
to me. Makes you look at me. Lets me see 
my power to hurt you. Lets me see your beau¬ 
tiful clear tears. But, in spite of me and the 
‘dark flower’ of my love, your own meaning will 
find the sun and the bright flowers. And when 
I see you like that, what will it do to me—in 
spite of everything, even Bill Raymond? Will 
I stay back in my night, watching you through 
the leaves, in decent possession of myself, and 
happy in your having Bill and your rightful 
simple happiness, or will I, like the cur that any 
man often is, remind you that I showed you the 


224 THE HAIRPIN DUCHESS 

way-beautiful, led you to the treasure Judith, 
gave you your chance? Am I capable of that? 
There are black places among the leaves, and 
they make the pattern rich. Terribly dark and 
rich. Who knows? And you, Elsie? What 
would you do with me?—a man turned cur, 
saying behind Bill’s back, “I did all this for 
you. What are you doing for me ? To be paid 
is a man’s right.” The leaves are stirring fran¬ 
tically, a storm threatening, the pattern is all 
but lost. Was it the coming storm that gave 
me the black thoughts ?—cur’s thoughts ? Elsie, 
Elsie- 


THE END 














































































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